What is the state of the intellectual in politics?

BY DANIEL W. DREZNER

MARCH 14, 2006

Over at The American Interests web site, Francis Fukuyama and BernardHenri L?vy have a fascinating exchange on the relative merits of L?
vys American Vertigo. The part I found particularly fascinating comes near
the end:
FRANCIS FUKUYAMA: The idea that an intellectual must always speak truth
to power and never compromise means for ends seems to me a rather naive
view of how intellectuals actually behave, and reflects in many ways the
powerlessness of European intellectuals and their distance from the real
world of policy and politics. Of course, the academy must try to remain an
institutional bastion of intellectual freedom that is not subject to vagaries of
political opinion. But in the United States, to a much greater degree than in
Europe, scholars, academics and intellectuals have moved much more easily
between government and private life than in Europe, and are much more
involved in formulating, promoting and implementing policies than their
European counterparts.
This necessarily limits certain kinds of intellectual freedom, but Im not sure
that, in the end, this is such a bad thing. I myself worked for more than ten
years at the RAND Corporation, the original think tank satirized in Stanley
Kubricks Dr. Strangelove that did contract research for the U.S. Air Force
and Defense Department. Obviously, one cannot be a free thinker in a place
like that (Daniel Ellsberg tried to be and he was fired), and that is one of the
reasons that I eventually left to go to a university. But overall, I believe that
a democracy is better off having intellectuals pay systematic attention to
policy issues, even if it is occasionally corrupting.
Having to deal not with ideal solutions but with the real world of power and
politics is a good discipline for an intellectual. There is a fine line between
being realistic and selling ones soul, and in the case of the Iraq war many
neoconservatives got so preoccupied with policy advocacy that they blinded
themselves to reality. But its not clear that virtue necessarily lies on the
side of intellectuals who think they are simply being honest. BERNARDHENRI L?VY: Thats it. I think we have come to heart of what divides us.
The problem lies with the definition of what you and I call an intellectual,
and beyond its definition, its function. Unlike you, I dont think an
intellectuals purpose is to run the RAND Corporation or any institution like
it. Not because I despise RAND, or because I believe in Kubricks burlesque
portrayal of it.
No, I just think that while some people are running RAND, others no more or
no less worthy or deserving should be dealing with, shall we say, the
unfiltered truth. A democracy needs both, imperatively and absolutely

both?realistic intellectuals and idealistic intellectuals. Both types and

the functions they embody have recognizable places inside society, even if
some societies value one type more than the other. America needs
intellectuals with a selfless concern for sense, complexity and truth. This is
just as essential to its equilibrium (possibly even to its moral fiber and
therefore to its good health) as the existence of universal suffrage or the
separation of powers ? la Montesquieu.
I suspect that Fukuyama would not disagree with L?vys express desire for
both kinds of intellectuals. I do wonder, however, about the health of the
institutions that support both sets of intellectuals in the United States.
[What about Europe?ed. Oh, Lord know, the situation is probably worse
there but thats not my concern here.] The trouble with think tanks and
the like is a seasonal topic of conversation in the blogosphere. As for the
academy, well, lets just say that many of my colleagues make Hollywood
seem politically grounded by comparison. Is the system broken? If so, can it
be fixed? If so, how?

The limits of political science

BY DANIEL W. DREZNER

DECEMBER 15, 2006

The November 2006 issue of the American Political Science Review is a

special one:
The Evolution of Political Science. Commemorating
the 100th anniversary of the APSR, it consists of about 25 short essays
discussing how the APSR has treated various political phenomena. Theres
something for everyone in this issue. History of political science is not as
widely taught as history of economic thought, but those who are interested
should check out the whole issue particularly Michael Heaney and Mark
Hansens take on The Chicago school of political science. Conservative
critics of the academy will delight in laughing at Michael Parentis rant about
how political science is a conservative discipline. World politics types will
likely find Bruce Bueno de Mesquitas essay worth of perusal. The one that
stands out for me is Andrew Bennett and John Ikenberrys The Reviews
Evolving Relevance for U.S. Foreign Policy 1906-2006 Bennett and Ikeberry
go back over all of the IR contributions to the APSR. Their chief finding? Even
in the good old days when the APSR actively publshed policy relevant
work, political scientists did not appear to be clued in to the brewing
problems of world politics:
To read early issues of the Review is to be reminded that aspiring
toward policy relevance is quite different from achieving it, and that
any policy influence the profession does achieve will not necessarily be in
directions that future historians will find praiseworthy. Just as
the Review and the political science profession in general failed to anticipate
the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, the Review before 1914
conveyed little sense that a cataclysmicworld warwas imminent.The journal
did publish an article on the Balkans (Harris 1913), but it did not focus on
the larger power transitions taking place in Europe until publication of a
rather realist analysis of ?The Causes of the Great War? after World War I
had begun (Turner 1915). In this same time period, the Review was filled
with articles putting a favorable emphasis on international law as a means
toward peace. After World War I, the Review played a role in the ?idealismrealism? debate of the 1920s (Carr 1940), largely favoring the idealist side
with more than a dozen articles through the decade on the League of
Nations or international law. Former President William Howard Taft, for

example, launched a staunch defense of the League of Nations in the

Review (Taft 1919).
Only one article in the journal in the 1920s included the term ?balance of
power? in its title, and this article strongly criticized balance of power
politics and argued that the building of international institutions was the
best answer to the problem of war (Hoard 1925). In the 1930s, a handful of
articles began to focus on the issues that would precipitate World War II,
including the Manchurian crisis, nationalism, and the geographic bases of
states? foreign policies, but no articles were fully dedicated to assessing the
international implications of the rise of Hitler or Germany. Articles
sympathetic to the League of Nations process, on the other hand, continued
right up until the spring of 1939 (Myers 1939), although an article critical of
international law appeared in 1938 (Wild 1938).
It is an interesting piece of trivia to know that not one, but two presidents
have published in the APSR. UPDATE: Commenters point out a possible
selection bias question it might be that political scientists did generate
useful predictions, but these predictions were simply not published in
theAPSR. This is a valid point, but I think it applies better to the post-1945
environment than the pre-1945 one. Most of the major IR journals
International Organization, World Politics, International Security,
International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution did not exist
before 1945. All of the policy journals, except for Foreign Affairs, were not in
existence. Therefore, prior to 45, the APSR would have been the predicted
outlet for scholarly work on world politics. On the other hand,Foreign
Affairs might have siphoned off a few articles. I know of at least one person
who received tenure at a major research institution, when their only
publication was a Foreign Affairs article.

The kind of conversations that happen at IR

conferences

BY DANIEL W. DREZNER

OCTOBER 23, 2007

UPDATE: As God is my witness, I did not know about this when I posted the
exchange below. The following transcript approximates a real exchange that
took place at the conference I attended this past weekend among serious
members of the international relations community. This is a true story. Only
the names have been changed to protect the innocent:
POLICYMAKER A: You know, theyve done experiments with monkeys where
they have to do tricks to earn a cucumber. The two monkeys can see each
other do the tricks, as well as the rewards they receive. After a few days of
trick, cucumber, etc., the experimenter gave the first monkey a cucumber,
but then gave the second monkey a red grape after his trick. The first
monkey nibbled at his cucumber, but did not finish it. The next day, this was
repeated. And the first monkey took the cucumber and threw it on the
ground. The third day, the first monkey took the cucumber and threw it at
the experimenter. So the point is, all primates have an innate sense of
fairness, and will react when they see it violated. IR THEORIST A: Heres the
thing if the experimenter shoots the monkey when it throws the
cucumber, the other monkeys will process that information as well. So its
not only about a sense of fairness, its about survival. POLICYMAKER B: Yes,
the experimenter could shoot the monkey, and maybe that would cow the
other monkeys into submision. If you keep shooting monkeys, however, it
might encourage the remaining ones to rise up and overthrow the
experimenters and establish their own cucumber plantation.

For the rest of the conference, this last exchange was referred to as the
cucumber paradigm. I wonder if George Orwell hung around international
relations types all that much.
I am considering for my introductory World Politics class in the Fall. I call it
IR Vocabulary, and the basic idea is to split students into pairs and have
each pair go off and find consensus definitions of key IR terms, My intuition
here is that in order to have a good discussion about world politics, there
are some basic terms that we need to know; some of these terms are more
or less empirical and refer to objects in the world, while others are more or
less conceptual and refer to ways of making sense of those objects. [Yes,
yes, this is an unstable distinction; yes, empirical terms are conceptual and
vice versa . . . but there is still a difference, if only a difference of degree,
between a term like 'the balance of power' and a term like 'the Security
Council.']
So heres my question for all of you: if you were going to draw up a list of
twenty key terms that people ought to have working definitions of in order
to sensibly and meaningfully talk about world politics, what would they be?
What is the basic vocabulary that people have to know before they can start
in with the arguing and the debating and the pondering?

The ten worst books in international relations

BY DANIEL W. DREZNER

APRIL 10, 2009

Its "top ten" week here at Foreign Policy, and the powers that be have
asked me to chip in with a list of my own.
The thing is, Steve Walt poached a lot of the books I would have named on
my own list of top ten international relations books (if theres real demand
for a "top 10" books in international political economy specifically, let me
know in the comments and Ill put one up next week).
So, rather than replicate Steve, lets have some fun what are the
ten worstbooks in international relations?
In one sense, this question is difficult to answer, in that truly bad books are
never read. Smply putting down books by bad people Mein Kampf, etc.
is kind of superfluous. The books matter less than the person.
So, lets be clear on the criteria: to earn a place on this list, were talking
about:

Books by prominent international policymakers that put you to sleep;

Books that were influential in some way but also spectacularly wrong,
leading to malign consequences.

In chronological order:
1. Norman Angell, The Great Illusion. This book has been widely
misinterpreted, so lets be clear about what Angell got right and got wrong.
He argued that the benefits from international trade vastly exceeded the
economic benefits of empire, and therefore the economic motive for empire
no longer existed. He was mostly right about that. He then argued that an
enlightened citizenry would glom onto this fact and render war obsolete.
Writing this in 1908, he was historically, spectacularly wrong.
2. E.H. Carr, Nationalism and After. Carrs Twenty Years Crisis is one of
the best books about international relations ever written. This is not that
book. Here, Carr argues that nationalism is a passing fad and that
eventually the number of nation-states in the world will be reduced to less
than twenty. Since this book was published, U.N. membership has at least
tripled.
3. Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb. The first of many, many, many
books in which Ehrlich argued that the worlds population was growing at an
unsustainable rate, outstripping global resources and leading to inevitable
mass starvation. Ehrlichs book committed a triple sin. First, he was wrong
on the specifics. Second, by garnering so much attention by being wrong,
he contributed to the belief that alarmism was the best way to get people to
pay attention to the environment. Third, by crying wolf so many times,
Ehrlich numbed many into not buying actual, real environmental threats.
4. Shintaro Ishihara, The Japan That Can Say No: Why Japan Will
Be First Among Equals Written at the peak of Japans property bubble,
Shintaro argued that Japan was destined to become the next great
superpower. Whoops.
5. Kenichi Ohmae, The End of the Nation State: The Rise of
Regional Economies. Plenty of management consultants have tried to
write the Very Big Book. And plenty of authors have predicted the demise of
the nation-state in their books. Ohmae encapsulates both of these trends.
Still, theres something extra that puts him on this list over 90% of the
footnotes in this book are to other works by Kenichi Ohmae. Its the most
blatant use of the footnote as a marketing strategy that I have ever seen.
6. Robert D. Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts. Kaplan argued that "ancient
hatreds" guaranteed perpetual conflict in the Balkans. According to his
aides, this book heavily influenced Bill Clintons reluctance to intervene in
the Balkans for the first two years of his presidency.

7. Caspar Weinberger, Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years in

the Pentagon. Back when I was a grad student, I needed to check out the
memoirs of Reagan cabinet officials to see if there was anything that could e
gleaned about a particular case. George Shultzs memoirs were chock-full
of useful bits of information. This book, on the other hand, was a vast
wasteland of barren prose.
8. Warren Christopher, In the Stream of History: Shaping Foreign
Policy for a New Era. Makes Weinbergers memoirs seem exciting by
comparison. ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
9. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire. Ordinarily, this massive
exercise in generating non-falsifiable arguments about an actorless empire
would have slipped into obscurity a few months after publication. In this
case, however, Emily Eakin claimed in the New York Times that it was the
"next big thing" in international relations. Which meant this book was
inflicted on a whole generation of poor, unsuspecting IR grad students.
10. Kenneth Pollack, The Threatening Storm: The Case For
Invading Iraq. In the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Pollacks
book became the intellectual justification for Democrats to support the
invasion. And we now know that result.

What I told the Navy

BY STEPHEN M. WALT

JUNE 18, 2009

I spent Tuesday at the Naval War Colleges annual Current Strategy

Forumand participated on a panel on Strategic Challenges and
Opportunities with John Ikenberry of Princeton and Mitchell Reiss of William
and Mary. I thought the panel went very well, with interesting contributions
from the other panelists, adroit management by moderator Jonathan Pollock,
and some excellent questions from the large and responsive audience.

I occurred to me that FP readers might be interested in what I had to say on

our panel, so what follows is a slightly truncated version of my remarks.
The global balance of power is and will remain very favorable for the United
States, and that the main dangers to U.S. security in the near-term are
various self-inflicted wounds. In other words, the United States can do more
to harm itself through misguided policies than our adversaries can do to us
through deliberate acts of malevolence. We shouldnt drop our guard, in
short, but we should also take care not to shoot ourselves in the foot.
This view is at odds with a lot of contemporary writing about Americas
international position. Over the past several years, for example, several
prominent books and studies have concluded that Americas position is
deteriorating and that a new MP world is rapidly emerging. For example,
both Fareed Zakarias The Post-American World and the National Intelligence
Councils Global Trends 2025 study argue that the rise or resurgence of
Russia, China, the EU, Brazil, and India are recreating a multipolar world,
and that this will have profound implications for U.S. foreign policy.
This prediction is mistaken, or at least premature. To begin with, the U.S.
economy still dwarfs the other major powers. According to the World Bank,
US GDP was $13.9 trillion in 2007, compared with $4.3 bn. for Japan, $3.3
bn. for Germany, $3.2 bn. for China, and $2.8 bn. for Great Britain. In 2007,
therefore, the US economy was bigger than next four powers combined. Its
true that the U.S. economy took a big hit in 2008, but so did everyone else,
including China.
Second, U.S. military power dwarfs all others, despite our difficulties in Iraq
and Afghanistan. Not only does the United States spend more on national
security than the rest of the world combined, but no other major power
spends as large a percentage of its GDP on national security as the United
States does. Not surprisingly, no country has the global reach of the United
States or the capacity to operate with near-impunity over most of the
worlds common spaces.
Third, this situation isnt going to change very much, because the United
States is the only advanced industrial power whose population will grow
significantly over the next few decades. Most European countries have low
birth rates, which means their populations are both shrinking and getting
older. This trend is especially evident in Russia and also in Japan.
Chinas population will projected to increase slightly over the next twenty
years and then begin to decrease, as the effects of the one-child policy
kick in. China will also have a very large demographic bulge of retirees,
which will be an increasingly costly burden over time.
The United States, by contrast, is going to continue to grow, in part because
U.S. birth rates are higher and also because legal (and illegal) immigration
to the United States will almost certainly continue. The United States will

have the youngest population of any major power in 2030, therefore, which
is good news for our long-term strength.
If you project out to where these various economies are going to be in 2030,
U.S. prospects look good and the chances for true multipolarity seem
remote. My Harvard colleague Richard N. Cooper projects that by 2030 the
US share of world economy will decline only slightlyfrom 28 percent today
to 26 percent while China will rise from 5 percent today to roughly 14
percent. The shares controlled by Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Russia,
Brazil, or India will remain in the low single digits.
So we arent going to see a true multipolar world anytime soon. We might
see a bipolar world in 20 or 30 years, but it will still be a fairly lopsided
bipolarity with the United States still leading China by a wide margin.
Moreover, the United States will continue to enjoy a highly favorable
geopolitical position. It is the only major power in the Western hemisphere,
while the other major powers share the Eurasian landmass. This situation
means these states tend to worry more about each other than they do about
the United States even though the United States is a lot stronger and it
gives many of these states a powerful incentive to try to stay on good terms
with us in case they need help to deal with one of their neighbors. So in
addition to being materially stronger than anyone in Eurasia, the United
States also has long-standing alliances in Europe and Asia and new strategic
partnerships emerging with countries like India.
This is not to deny that states like China, Russia or Iran have been acquiring
a somewhat greater capacity to defend their interests near their own
borders, especially when compared with what they could do back when
unipolarity first emerged in the early 1990s. This trends will constrain U.S.
freedom of action slightly, give other states additional options, and
complicate U.S. diplomacy somewhat. But in no case do these trends pose a
mortal threat to vital US interests. Even in 2030, none of these states is
going to want or be able to take the United States on in a direct test of
strength.
Thus, although it is easy to identify a number of vexing foreign policy
problems such as North Korea, Iran, Sudan, the Somali pirates, or
Afghanistan none of them actually threaten truly vital U.S. interests. In
fact, the only threat that could directly threaten the American way of life
would be a nuclear terrorist attack on U.S. soil. We know that al Qaeda
would attack us if it could, but so long as they do not acquire nuclear
weapons or other WMD, they cannot do significant harm to the United
States directly. Even 9/11, tragic and shocking as it was, did not threaten
our global position significantly. It follows that reducing the danger of WMD
terrorism remains a top priority, but that task is best accomplished
by continued efforts to secure existing nuclear arsenals and potentially
usable nuclear materials.

Given the balance of power in our favor, therefore, the biggest threats we
face are self-inflicted wounds. And our biggest opportunities involve
exploiting our favorable position in order to preserve our current position as
long as possible. What are some obvious mistakes to avoid, and what are
the opportunities we should take advantage of?
The first self-inflicted wound the United States could make would be to
spend too much on national security. A country can also get into trouble by
spending too little on defense, of course, but that doesnt seem very likely
at present. As noted earlier, the United States spends more on national
security than the rest of the world combined (and most of the other
significant military powers are our allies) and we still devote a larger percent
of our GDP to national security than any other major power does. Military
superiority is a good thing and we ought to keep it, but we all know that too
much of a good thing is usually bad for you. As Kenneth Waltz once wrote,
more is not better if less is enough. The United States is expected to face
a budget deficit of 1.8trillion (!) dollars next year, and theres more red ink
in sight. We have critical needs in national infrastructure, education, and
health care, and our long-term strength depends on these elements of
national power too.
A second self-inflicted wound is the recurring tendency to view allies as
liabilities rather than assets. As its array of allies has increased, U.S.
strategists tend to see this trend as simply increasing the number of areas
we are committed to protect, instead of adding to our combined capabilities
and therefore making it easier for us to achieve our national security goals.
The United States has become accustomed to letting allies free-ride, and to
supporting allies even when they do things that are not in the U.S. interest
The lesson here is that America ought to take advantage of its favorable
geopolitical position and play hard-to-get a bit more. We arent going to get
greater cooperation from our allies if we keep insisting on doing it all
ourselves, or if we arent willing to play hardball with them when they do
things that we think are foolish or wrong.
The third self-inflicted wound is forgetting what the U.S. military is and isnt
designed to do, and ending up in costly efforts to remake the politics of
areas that we do not understand. U.S. armed forces are extremely good at
deterring or reversing large-scale conventional aggression, at preserving
balance of power in key regions, and contributing to other aspects of global
stability, like putting teeth in programs like the Proliferation Security
Initiative.
But the United States is not good at governing other societies who is?
particularly when it lacks detailed knowledge of the societies in question,
has insufficient language skills within the national security and foreign policy
establishments, and when the prerequisites for democracy are absent from
these areas. It follows that our current preoccupation with
counterinsurgency which is largely an artifact of the decisions to occupy
Afghanistan and Iraq on a long-term basis is a strategic misstep.

And that brings me to the opportunity side of the equation. Given the
evolving balance of power and our geopolitical situation, U.S. should
gradually return to a strategy of offshore balancing. What does that mean?

First, the United States should maintain naval, air, and ground forces
that can preserve a favorable balance of power in key strategic areas
(which mostly means Asia and the Persian Gulf), while minimizing our
on-shore presence, especially in areas where it generates
opposition or fuels anti-Americanism.

Second, the United States should maintain its formal alliance

commitments in Europe, but devolve more responsibility for European
security to NATOs European members. Apart from occasional
exercises, the U.S. should maintain only token forces there. And after
nearly sixty years, isnt it time that a European serve as SACEUR?
Europe is democratic, prosperous, tranquil, and united within
institutions like the European Union. This is good news for everyone,
and it should allow the United States to shift most of its strategic
attention elsewhere (a process that is in fact already underway). We
would of course remain willing to intervene in Europe if the balance of
power were to break down completely, but that isnt going to happen
anytime soon.

Third, the United States should scrupulously avoid costly and openended commitments to nation-building in areas of the world we do
not understand which is most of them and encourage the United
Nations and interested regional powers to take on more of this
burden. This shift will entail playing hard to get with key allies a bit
more, so that they do their fair share and so that they understand
that American backing is not something anyone should entirely take
for granted. Remember: American support is a very valuable asset,
and other states should do a lot for us in order to get it.

Whats the bottom line? Although the United States faces a number of
foreign policy problems and should for its own reasons do what it can
to address them, its overall global position is remarkably favorable and most
of the challenges it faces are manageable. Put differently, virtually any other
major powers would be delighted to trade places with us, and those
Cassandras who constantly talk about Americas precarious security position
are indulging in dangerous fantasies. At present, the main task is to avoid
Pogos warning: we have met the enemy and he is us.

What is the best international relations book of the

decade?

BY DANIEL W. DREZNER

JULY 1, 2009

The International Studies Association announces a book contest:

The International Studies Best Book of the Decade Award honors the best
book published in international studies over the last decade. In order to be
selected, the winning book must be a single book (edited volumes will not
be considered) that has already had or shows the greatest promise of
having a broad impact on the field of international studies over many years.
Only books of this broad scope, originality, and interdisciplinary significance
should be nominated.
Hmmm. which books published between 2000 and 2009 should be on the
short list? This merits some thought, but the again, this is a blog post, so
the following choices are the first five books that came to mind:
1. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001)
2. G. John Ikenberry, After Victory (2001).
3. Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill (2003)
4. Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales, Savng Capitalism from the
Capitalists (2003).
5. Gregory Clark, A Farewell to Alms (2007).
I dont agree with everything in these books but they linger the most in
the cerebral cortex.
So, dear readers, which books do you think are worthy of consideration for
this award?

Musings on a summers day

BY STEPHEN M. WALT

JULY 30, 2009

Ive been studying politics a long time now, and there are still lots of things
about it that at some level I just dont get. Im not saying that I have no idea
why these things occur or suggesting that they are totally inexplicable. Im
just saying that I still find them a bit baffling.
So I made a list, and thought Id share a few of them. Maybe some of you
will share my confusion.
1. Ive never really understood why plenty of smart people think the United
States still needs thousands of nuclear weapons (or ever did). Im familiar
with the abstract theology of nuclear weapons policy and I dont favor total
nuclear disarmament, but the case for an arsenal of more than a few
hundred weapons eludes me. See here or here for convincing arguments to
this effect.
2. Im still puzzled by why Americans are so willing to spend money on
ambitious overseas adventures, and yet so reluctant to pay taxes for roads,
bridges, better schools, and health care here in the United States. My fellow
Americans, wheres your sense of entitlement? And frankly, Im also
surprised that the U.S. armed forces havent put up more resistance to the
seemingly open-ended missions they keep getting handed by ambitious
politicians. I can think of various reasons why they remain willing to make
these sacrifices (its a volunteer force, theres a long tradition of civilian
authority, our soldiers, sailors and airman are dedicated patriots, the top
brass are often chosen for their political malleability, etc.), but it still
surprises me.
3. I dont understand why many people think invoking God is a compelling
justification for their particular policy preferences, and why they assume

that this move is a trump card that ends all discussion. The idea that
Jehovah, Jesus, Allah, Odin, or Whomever gave some people permanent title
to some patch of land, dictated how men and women should relate to each
other for all eternity, or provided the incontestable answer to ANY public
policy question is simply beyond me. Yet it remains a common feature of
political discourse at home and abroad. Weird.
4. Im equally baffled by when someone invokes history to justify a
territorial claim and assumes that this basis is unchallengeable. This view
assumes that sovereignty over some area is infinitely inheritable (no matter
what has happened in the interim), ignores the fact the borders have
changed a lot over time, and further assumes that theres only one version
of history that matters. I understand why Serbs invoke the Battle of Kosovo
in 1389 to justify their current claims to control that region, why Israelis and
Palestinians invoke different readings of history to justify their positions on
Jerusalem, or why certain Asian states invoke different historical claims to
assorted rocks in the South China Sea they are all looking for some way
to persuade others to let them have what they want.
Whats odd is that people who make such claims tend to think their view is
simply incontestable and other equally valid historical claims arent worth
paying attention to. Youre entitled to your version of history, I suppose, but
why do you assume that anyone is going to be persuaded by it?
5. I do not understand why Americans are so susceptible to the selfinterested testimony of foreigners who want to embroil us in conflicts with
some foreign government that they happen to dislike. A case in point would
be Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, who sold a lot of fairy tales to the Bush
administration prior to the 2003 invasion. As Machiavelli (himself an exile)
warned in The Discourses: How vain the faith and promises of men who are
exiles from their own country. .. Such is their extreme desire to return to
their homes that they naturally believe many things that are not true, and
add many others on purpose; so that with what they really believe and what
they say they believe, they will fill you with hopes to that degree that if you
attempt to act on them, you will incur a fruitless expense, or engage in an
undertaking that will involve you in ruin. This sort of thing goes back to the
Peloponnesian Wars (at least), and youd think wed have learned to be
more skeptical by now.
6. I certainly dont get the business model that informs the content of
theWall Street Journals op-ed page. The rest of the newspaper is an
excellent news source, with reportage that is often of very high quality. The
editorial page, by contrast, is often a parody of right-wing lunacy: the last
refuge of discredited neoconservatives, supply-siders, and other extremists.
Do theJournals editors really think democracy is best served by offering the
public such a one-sided diet of opinion? Do they feel no responsibility to
offer a wider range of views to their readers, as the rival Financial
Times does? More importantly, wouldnt their market share (and profits) be
increased if they offered a more diverse range of views? Im equally puzzled

by the op-ed page of the Washington Post: whats the business model that
says cornering the market on tired neoconservative pundits is the best way
to attract new readers? (FP is now owned by the Post corporation too, I
might add, but anyone who follows this Web site knows that there isnt any
discernible party line here.)
7. A related point: I cant figure out why newspapers arent hiring more
bloggers to write columns for them on a regular basis. I started reading
blogs because the stuff I read on the web tends to be smarter, funnier,
better researched, and more entertainingly written than the pablum that
appears on the op-ed pages of most newspapers. A lot of bloggers seem to
produce more material too; frankly, doing a column twice a week sounds
almost leisurely compared to what some bloggers pound out. There are dull
bloggers and some excellent mainstream print pundits, of course, but Im
amazed that more bloggers arent breaking into the so-called big-time
mainstream media. Probably another good reason why newspapers are
dying.
8. In an era where the United States is facing BIG problems at home or
abroad, it is both puzzling and disheartening to observe the amount of ink
and airspace devoted to the Skip Gates arrest, Michael Jacksons demise, or
the birther controversy. But then I didnt get the Princess Di phenomenon
or the whole reality-TV thing either.
9. I dont understand why academics defend the institution of tenure so
energetically, and then so rarely use it for its intended purpose (i.e., to
permit them to tackle big and/or controversial subjects without worrying
about losing their jobs) When it comes to politics at least, the Ivory Tower
seems increasingly populated by methodologically sophisticated sheep.
10. Im both amused and annoyed by the highly intrusive security
procedures that now exist at airports, which are almost certainly not costeffective. The key to preventing another 9/11 wasnt to have us all removing
our shoes or carrying shampoo in a plastic bag; the key to preventing
another 9/11-style attack was to put locks on the cockpit doors, so terrorists
couldnt gain control of the airplane and turn it into a weapon. (A smarter
Middle East policy wouldnt hurt either). Ill concede that additional
screening is probably preventing a few additional incidents, but I question
whether the extra expense and inconvenience is ultimately worth it. Alas,
nobody is going to relax those procedures now, because theyd worry about
being blamed the next time someone managed to blow up an airliner. I
understand the CYA impetus that will keep these procedures in place from
now until doomsday, but the irrationality of it all annoys me every time I fly.

America unbound

BY STEPHEN M. WALT

AUGUST 6, 2009

By Justin Logan
Unipolarity is one of the hotter IR theory topics, and its virtually impossible
to discuss the subject without reference to World Out Of Balance. A terrific
book by Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, it provokes the reader
to rethink his or her views, and engages seriously with realism, liberalism,
and constructivism.
Their argument, in a nutshell, is that scholars from the above schools have
underrated the United States ability to transcend structural
constraints:realists overrate the impact of the balance of power; liberals
overrate the impact of economic interdependence and international
institutions, and constructivists overrate legitimacy constraints on the
United States.
The authors conclude:

Our book provides the necessary analysis for concluding that the United
States does, in fact, have an opportunity to revise the system and,
moreover, that this opportunity will long endure Because their theories
ignore or misunderstand the implications of the unipolar distribution of
power, scholars have generally underestimated the U.S. potential to remake
the post-1991 international system. More realistic theories with a clear-eyed
appraisal of the workings of a unipolar system would lead them to see the
systemic constraints they believe stand in the way of such a policy for what
they are: artifacts of the scholarship of previous eras.
Now thats an argument.
The topic of unipolarity has spawned two main debates: The first over how
long unipolarity is likely to endure, and the second over whether unipolarity
is peaceful. But to my mind, there is a third interesting question worth
examining the same one Gen. David Petraeus asked journalist Rick
Atkinson on his way into Iraq: Tell me how this ends?
For many scholars, this is a moot question: Unipolarity is already ending. But
even for those who think the end is further down the road, imperial
overstretch taking on a range of commitments beyond our means is
one way America might fall from being in a league of its own to being just
first among equals.
In a recent Foreign Affairs article, Brooks and Wohlforth waved off dangers
such as the long-term fiscal imbalances in the United States by observing
that these problems can be fixed. Similarly, in a roundtable review of their
book, the authors admitted that they did not compose a theory of how
unipolarity ends, but they seem reasonably certain that overstretch is not a
concern. Responding to criticism that power yields ambition and ambition
can lead to overstretch, Brooks and Wohlforth fired back:

This is a bit like arguing that a person will dramatically increase his
spending priorities if he garners a windfall e.g. he goes from having $1
million in assets to having $10 million in assets and will be more likely to
become bankrupt as a result. Yet how much a consumer spends is not
structurally determined by income, just as how much a state takes on its
foreign policy is not structurally determined by how much power it has. A
wealthy individual can go bankrupt, to be sure, but it requires poorer
choices to do so than if they had fewer resources.
Im not convinced. Long traditions in human history and in international
politics suggest otherwise. Hubris has not been a common affliction of
people of modest means. The pride that goeth before a fall is frequently
spawned by possessions and power. Or, as Lord Acton wrote, power tends
to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

But perhaps the most puzzling aspect of Brooks and Wohlforths dismissal of
the overstretch argument is that it was Wohlforth who argued (with two coauthors in an edited volume on the balance of power in ancient history and
non-European contexts), that overstretch is a frequent cause of the demise
of hegemonic systems. Summing up the findings, Wohlforth et al surmised
that:
Not only is military expansion a well-nigh universal behavior, but such
expansion is frequently characterized by myopic advantage-seeking
(boondoggling), rather than aimed at long-term system maintenance
(balancing), even among rivals to potential hegemons The pattern of
boondoggling is a major reason why balanced systems routinely break
down, and why systemic hegemons frequently squander their advantages.
(Emphasis mine.)
If unprofitable military expansion is a well-nigh universal behavior that
explains the demise of systemic hegemons, its strange that Brooks and
Wohlforth have been as dismissive of the concept as they have.
Maybe Im just being a Nervous Nellie (or maybe Ive fallen victim to the
Pundits Fallacy, where a pundit assumes that the key to political success,
international or otherwise, involves the adoption of the commentators own
policy views). But I think the perils of the systemic activism Brooks and
Wohlforth are urging, represent more cause for concern than they let on.
Justin Logan is associate director of foreign policy studies at the Cato

Field Study: Just How Relevant Is Political

Science?
By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: October 19, 2009

After Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, this month proposed

prohibiting the National Science Foundation from wasting any federal
research funding on political science projects, political scientists rallied in
opposition, pointing out that one of this years Nobel winners had been a
frequent recipient of the very program now under attack.
Yet even some of the most vehement critics of the Coburn proposal
acknowledge that political scientists themselves vigorously debate the
fields direction, what sort of questions it pursues, even how useful the
research is.
Much of the political science work financed by the National Science
Foundation is both rigorous and valuable, said Jeffrey C. Isaac, a professor
at Indiana University in Bloomington, where one new winner of the Nobel in
economic science, the political scientist Elinor Ostrom, teaches. But were
kidding ourselves if we think this research typically has the obvious public
benefit we claim for it, he said. We political scientists can and should do a
better job of making the public relevance of our work clearer and of doing
more relevant work.
Mr. Isaac is the editor of Perspectives on Politics, a journal that was created
by the fields professional organization to bridge the divide after a group of
political scientists led a revolt against the growing influence of statistical
methods and mathematics-based models in the discipline. In 2000 an
anonymous political scientist who called himself Mr. Perestroika roused
scores of colleagues to protest the organization, the American Political
Science Association, and its flagship journal, The American Political Science
Review, arguing that the two were marginalizing scholars who focused on
traditional research based on history, culture and archives.
Though there is still jockeying over jobs, power and prestige particularly
in an era of shrinking budgets much of that animus has quieted, and most
political scientists agree that a wide range of approaches makes sense.
What remains, though, is a nagging concern that the field is not producing
work that matters. The danger is that political science is moving in the
direction of saying more and more about less and less, said Joseph Nye, a
professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, whose
work has been particularly influential among American policy makers.
There are parts of the academy which, in the effort to be scientific, feel we
should stay away from policy, Mr. Nye said, that it interferes with the
science.
In his view statistical techniques too often determine what kind of research
political scientists do, pushing them further into narrow specializations cut
off from real-world concerns. The motivation to be precise, Mr. Nye warned,
has overtaken the impulse to be relevant.
In recent years he and other scholars, including Robert Putnam and Theda
Skocpol, both former presidents of the American Political Science

Association, have urged colleagues not to shy away from the big
questions.
Graduate students discussing their field, said Peter Katzenstein, a political
science professor at Cornell University, often speak in terms of an
interesting puzzle, a small intellectual conundrum that tests the ingenuity
of the solver, rather than the large, sloppy and unmanageable problems that
occur in real life.
This is the great divide on what we are doing, he said, adding that political
scientists did not agree on the unit of analysis (whether the focus should be
on the individual or social relationships), the source of knowledge or how to
measure things.
Rogers Smith, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who has
been active in the Perestroika movement, said that the question should
determine the method. If you want to test cause and effect, quantitative
methods are the preferred way to go, he said, but they cant tell how
political phenomena should be understood and interpreted whether a
protest, for instance, is the result of a genuine social movement or an
interest group, whether it is religious or secular.
Arthur Lupia, a professor in the University of Michigans political science
department, said he was using the scientific method to understand what
processes and institutions were necessary for a democratic society to
function.
Mr. Lupia is the lead investigator on one of the projects financed by the
National Science Foundation that Senator Coburn has attacked: the
American National Election Studies. Senator Coburn has maintained that
commentators on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and other news media outlets
provide a myriad of viewpoints to answer the same questions. He has
argued that the $91.3 million that the foundation spent on social science
projects over the last 10 years should have gone to biology, chemistry or
pharmaceutical science.
Mr. Lupia, whose background is in applied mathematics and economics,
concedes that political science is not quite like the natural sciences. First,
the subjects under study can argue back. But he maintains that it uses the
same rigorous mechanisms to evaluate observations as any other science.
The elections project, which has been financed by the foundation in various
forms for more than three decades and has involved 700 scientists, tracks
why citizens vote and how they respond to elections. The database is used
by thousands of scholars, and has been widely praised as illuminating the
question of why democracy works.
No date has been set for a vote on Senator Coburns proposal, which was
introduced on Oct. 7. Yet even as he is trying to restrict National Science
Foundation financing of social science, the Defense Department has been

recruiting scholars in the same fields to work on security issues like

terrorism, Iraq and Chinas military. The nation must embrace eggheads
and ideas, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has said, to meet potential
national threats.
Some Defense Department grants were awarded by the Pentagon through a
new program titled Minerva; others were distributed through the National
Science Foundation because it has experience in grant making and is
apolitical.
As for those who criticize quantitative analysis as too narrow, Mr. Lupia said
that the big questions were precisely what interested him. His work has
been used by the World Bank and government officials in India, for example,
to figure out which villages had sufficient institutions and practices to
ensure that money earmarked to build a water system would not end up in
someones pocket. Political science can also help determine what
institutions and arrangements are needed to help a dictatorship make the
transition to a democracy, he added.
After the fall of Communism, when Eastern European governments were
writing their constitutions, I can guarantee you they werent calling George
Stephanopoulos, Mr. Lupia said.
I try to identify problems and then identify solutions to them, he said, to
find the type of scientific method that can answer the questio

Its only a game really!

BY STEPHEN M. WALT

DECEMBER 11, 2009

A week ago I had the opportunity to participate in a one-day simulation of

the broad international effort to address Irans nuclear program, sponsored
by Harvards Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. The
participants were divided into various teams (the United States, EU, Russia,
China, Iran, Israel, and a GCC team representing other Persian Gulf
states), along with a control team that supervised events (and played the
role of the International Atomic Energy Agency). Several prominent
journalists observed the proceedings and were also available to leak
information to. The simulation was designed to begin on Dec. 1, 2009 and
cover the next twelve months, and various teams were able to negotiate
face-to-face (bilaterally or multilaterally), move military forces around, issue
press releases, make back-channel offers, etc.; in short, they could
undertake virtually any action that might have been possible in the real
world.
The result, as has already been reported, was discouraging: by the end of
the game, Iran hadnt agreed to halt enrichment, the P5+1 coalition was
collapsing, and the United States and Israel were having what could politiely
be called a candid and frank exchange of views. The sole piece of good
news was that there had been no recourse to military force by the time the
game ended.
Several participants have recently published their own take-aways from
the experience, which they appear to have found sobering. Writing in
theWashington Post, David Ignatius (who was one of the journalists in
attendance) suggested that although it was only a simulation, the game
nonetheless revealed some important real-life dynamics-and the inability of
any diplomatic strategy, so far, to stop the Iranian nuclear push. The head
of the Iranian team, former NSC aide Gary Sick, has offered reflections of
his own in a recent piece in The National, noting that By the end of the
game, the Americans had driven away all their ostensible allies, and wasted
immense time and effort, while Iran was better off than it had been at the
beginning. Sick also suggests that the moves of the US team were quite
similar to the strategy actually employed by the United States over the
course of the last three administrations.
I thoroughly enjoyed the experience but drew a different set of conclusions
from it. (I was on the U.S. team, and was assigned the role of SecDef Robert

Gates). My conclusion at the end of the game was that one could draw no
firm conclusions from the experience, and my principal concern was that
participants would be tempted to do just that.
In my view, what one might call the external validity of the game was
limited by three unrealistic features.

First, the timetable of the game was extremely compressed. In effect, we

were trying to simulate a full year of negotiations in a mere six hours. Thus,
each hour of the game covered two months, which meant that a team could
send a message to another team and receive a reply in due course, only to
discover that a month or more had passed and the original message was
now effectively obsolete. More to the point, the breakneck pace of the game
did not allow for any time for reflection, for the weighing of alternatives, or
even the formulation of clear or novel strategies. (Each team was given
about twenty-five minutes to plan its approach before the game began, and
I like to think U.S. leaders do a bit better than that in real life. Heck, Obama
just spent several months deciding what to do in Afghanistan). Yes, time is a
precious commodity and policymakers are often forced to juggle multiple
commitments, but I believe a more realistic timetable would have produced
very different results.
Second, trying to simulate a complex multiparty negotiation with four or
five-person teams was problematic, particularly when some team
members (myself included), had to leave the game temporarily to teach
their regular classes. This constraint required me to be absent for 90
minutes, which in terms of the games timetable meant that the U.S.
Secretary of Defense was effectively incommunicado for three months.
The same problem sidelined the person who played the Secretary of State
for a similar period. Moreover, given that team members had no staff and
thus no subordinates to give orders to, there was no one to delegate to and
it was impossible to conduct continuous consultations with all of the
relevant parties, even when both sides may have wanted to. What must
have looked to some like Bush-era unilateralism was instead simply an
unavoidable artifact of the games structure.
Third, the composition of the different teams was unavoidably slanted. The
U.S., Russian, Chinese, Iranian teams were all populated with and led by
Americans, while the Israeli team was made up entirely of Israelis and the
EU team was composed of Europeans. To have confidence in the validity of
the results, therefore, you have to assume that each of the teams actually
played the way that their real-life counterparts would have. That might be
true in the case of the U.S., Israeli, and European teams (though I wouldnt
assume it), but its obviously more of a stretch with the others.

These difficulties are not the fault of the games organizers, who faced
obvious constraints in putting the exercise together. Ideally, such a
simulation would have been played over a long week-end and covered a
shorter time period, but it would have been far more difficult to assemble an
equally impressive array of participants for an entire weekend. Putting
together a genuinely multi-national participant list (including appropriate
Iranians?), would have been even harder if not impossible.
The bottom line is that one ought to be exceedingly wary about
drawing anyconclusions about what this artificial exercise actually teaches.
To me, its real value is not as a crude crystal ball that allows us to divine the
future, or even as an analytical device that helps us identify particular
barriers to resolving some thorny diplomatic problem. After all, its not
exactly headline news to discover that resolving the Iranian nuclear issue
isnt easy, that there are certain tensions within the P5+1, or that Irans
objectives are at odds with those of the other participants.
Rather, the potential value of such an exercise lies in forcing participants to
take on different roles and see how a problem looks from a wholly different
perspective. With hindsight, I wish we had mixed things up a lot more: with
some Israelis on the Iran team, with real Russians, Chinese or EU citizens
playing on the U.S. or Israeli side, and so forth. That might have taught us
about some of the sources of misunderstanding that have made this issue
so hard to resolve, whatever the actual outcome of the game might have
been.

Are you smarter than a Fletcher School graduate

student?

BY DANIEL W. DREZNER

DECEMBER 15, 2009

The following question was on the final exam for my Global Political
Economy class this fall. If youre interested, provide a one paragraph
answer in the comments. Ill report back later in the week if these answers
are better than the ones Im about to grade:
"When China becomes the worlds largest economy, the current era of
globalization will come to an end. The simple fact is that while Great Britain
and the United States had open liberal polities, China does not. This will
foster mutual suspicion between China and the west, as well as discourage
China from fully opening up its domestic market. That, plus the geopolitical
tensions that come from a hegemonic power transition, means we can
expect a new era of mercantilism."
Do you agree or disagree with the above statement? Why or why not?
Hint: you get absolutely no extra credit for agreeing or disagreeing with
anything previously said on the subject on this blog.

A renaissance in nuclear security studies?

BY STEPHEN M. WALT

JANUARY 21, 2010

Ever since Hiroshima, the role of nuclear weapons in international politics

has been a central part of the security studies field. Think of the seminal
works of Bernard Brodie, Albert Wohlstetter, and Thomas Schelling, as well
as the somewhat less enduring but still important work of people like Pierre
Gallois, William Kaufmann, Herman Kahn, Hedley Bull, and others. (If you
want a real hoot, try to re-read Henry Kissingers Nuclear Weapons and
Foreign Policy (1957), the book that made his early reputation but has to
put it politely not aged well). Discussions of nuclear strategy were a
cottage industry in the 1970s and 1980s (think Robert Jervis, Colin Gray,
Desmond Ball, Bruce Blair, Paul Bracken, John Steinbruner, Ken Waltz, etc.),
and former statesman and policy wonks routinely weighed in on the issues
of nuclear proliferation and arms control.
Indeed, when I got my first job at Princeton in 1984, I was hired in part to
teach a course on nuclear weapons and arms control, and it routinely
attracted 50-100 students. The Cold War was still going strong and the
Reagan administration was raising the nuclear temperature in various ways,
so concerns about nuclear weapons were front and center. Interest in the
topic hasnt vanished entirely since then, but theres no course of that kind
at Harvard these days (or at Princeton, for that matter), and I havent
detected much student demand for one. (That may also reflect that fact
that there is only one regular faculty member in Harvards Government
Department whose main research interest is the study of war and peace, but
thats another story).

In recent years, however, scholarly interest in the topic has declined

dramatically. One reason is that there hasnt been that much new to say
about the subject; the essential features of deterrence theory are wellestablished by now, and the infeasibility of any sort of "nuclear war" seems
to be pretty well-understood (at least lets hope so). There have been a few
important works on nuclear-related topics in recent years (such as Nina
Tannenwalds work on the nuclear taboo, the policy literature on "loose
nukes" and nuclear terrorism, and the many discussions of the Indian,
Pakistani, North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs), but the end of the
Cold War and the gradual reduction in the Russian and American nuclear
arsenals has diminished interest in this question. With some notable
exceptions, younger scholars and graduate students have tended to pursue
other questions (e.g, ethnic conflict, terrorism, religion, insurgency,
globalization, etc.), and interest in nuclear issues has declined.
That situation may now be changing, and a new initiative by the Stanton
Foundation could accelerate the trend. Back in the 1970s, the Ford
Foundation created university-based research centers in the field of
international security and arms control at Harvard, Stanford, Cornell and
UCLA, with the explicit goal of "restocking" the intellectual capital of the
field, primarily by supporting younger scholars.
The initiative was a resounding success, and a list of alumni from the
various Ford centers (which includes the Belfer Center where I work now)
reads like a "Whos Who" of the field (in both academia and the policy world)
in the United States and overseas.
Earlier this month, the Stanton Foundation announced a new nuclear
security fellowship program, which will offer ten-month stipends of 20,000
USD to predoctoral research fellows, and stipends for postdoctoral scholars
and junior faculty on a case-by-case basis and commensurate with
experience. The Belfer Centers International Security Program is one of the
hosting centers, so if youre interested (or if you know someone who should
be), you can find out how to apply here. (If Harvard is not to your liking for
some reason, other participants in Stanton program include Stanfords
Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), the Council on
Foreign Relations, the RAND Corporation, the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace and the International Institute for Strategic Studies in
London.)
And while Im on the topic, let me call your attention to some recent
publications that suggest a renewed interest in nuclear topics. Ive already
touted John Muellers important book Atomic Obsession, but you should also
read University of Texas historian Francis Gavins new article "Same as It
Ever Was: Nuclear Alarmism, Proliferation, and the Cold War," in the latest
issue of International Security. Gavin shows (convincingly, in my view), that
the current spate of nuclear alarmism rests in part on a misreading of
nuclear affairs during the Cold War (including the repackaging of "old threats
in new clothing"), and that a proper understanding of the past might lead to

better policy choices today. (Gavin also gets bonus points for using
a Talking Headslyric in his title.)
The next article, ("Posturing for Peace") by Vipin Narang of Harvard (and
starting next year, a faculty member at MIT), suggests that some degree of
alarm is still warranted. Narang analyzes Pakistans nuclear posture (i.e., its
combination of weaponry, command and control, and employment doctrine)
and suggests that Islamabads efforts to gain political leverage from its
arsenal have created a nuclear posture that is much less stable than it
should be. If reading Gavin makes you feel a bit more secure, reading
Narang will bring your blood pressure back up.
Lastly, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences has just released volume
2 of a special issue of Daedalus (edited by my colleague Steven Miller and
Scott Sagan of Stanford), on The Global Nuclear Future. The Academy has a
long history of producing seminal works in this area, and these two volumes
are excellent guides to the evolving nuclear environment. Who knows?
Maybe someone will decide that undergraduates ought to be able to take a
course on the subject at a place like Harvard.

Joe Nye was right

BY STEPHEN M. WALT

JANUARY 19, 2010

My colleague Joe Nye has made many contributions to scholarship and

policy, but his most lasting contribution to the political lexicon is the idea
of soft power. Its a concept that is simultaneously seductive and slippery:
It captures something that most of us intuitively recognize the capacity to
influence others without twisting arms, threatening, or compelling but its
also hard to measure or define with a lot of precision. And for a realist like
me, soft power has also seemed like a bit of an epiphenomenon, because
you need a lot of hard power to produce much of the soft variety.
Nonetheless, Id be remiss in not telling you about a recent article that
provides systematic empirical support for the soft power concept. Writing
in the latest issue of Foreign Policy Analysis, Carol Atkinson of Vanderbilt
University presents results on the impact that student exchange programs
(a classic instrument of soft power) have on the diffusion of liberal values.

She finds that there is a strong positive effect, and offers the following
provocative conclusion:
. . . the U.S. government often uses educational exchanges as a negative
sanction; prohibiting or limiting attendance by countries with poor human
rights records. However, my findings show that when the United States
allows only well behaved countries to participate, it restricts its ability to
build its own soft power across the international system. Over the long
term, engaging potential political elites from authoritarian states, rather
than excluding them from programs, provides an opportunity to channel
liberal ideas into some of the most democratically austere regions of the
world.
At the risk of appearing to be pleading on behalf of my own line of work, I
would just add that the United States is currently home to 17 of the top 20
universities in the world (Cambridge, Oxford, and the University of Tokyo are
the other three), according to the annual survey by Chinas Jiao Tong
University. In addition to being engines of innovation, those universities are
also powerful magnets for talented and ambitious people from all over the
world. Not only does the United States benefit from their presence, but
exposure to American ideals appears to have positive long-term effects on
political attitudes among most of them, and perhaps especially for those
who come from authoritarian societies. The lesson: If we let our universities
decline as California is now doing to the once-vaunted UC system we
are guaranteeing a much less influential future for subsequent generations.

Politicians, the press, and foreign policy: What to

read

BY STEPHEN M. WALT

FEBRUARY 10, 2010

Over the past few years, media critics like Glenn Greenwald, Mark Danner,
and Michael Massing have exposed some of the sloppiness, incestuousness,
and group-think that routinely afflicts mainstream media coverage of world
events, especially in the realm of foreign policy and national security. Even
"faux news" outlets like Jon Stewarts Daily Showhave contributed to greater
awareness of media failings, mostly by pointing out biases and
inconsistencies in a ruthlessly funny fashion.

Yet no matter how useful such critiques are, they need to be complemented
by more systematic scholarly studies of the complex relationship between
media coverage, public opinion, and actual foreign policy decisions. On that
topic, my colleague Matthew Baum and his co-author, Tim Groeling of UCLA,
have recently published an excellent book entitled War Stories: The Causes
and Consequences of Public Views on War (Princeton University Press).
Drawing on a wide array of empirical evidence (including opinion surveys,
media content, and foreign policy decisions), they argue that the interaction
between elites, media, and public opinion is a three-way process in which
each groups behavior is essentially strategic.
Politicians try to use media to advance their aims; the media picks stories in
order to maximize audience (or in some cases, to advance an ideological
agenda), and therefore tend to favor stories that are novel or surprising (like
when a prominent senator criticizes a president from his own party).
Similarly, the public does not just consume the news passively; readers and
viewers use various cues to gauge the credibility of different sources.
The book examines a dizzying array of hypotheses, and I cant do justice to
all of their findings in a short blog post. Among their more interesting
findings are:
1) the tendency for media
coverage to over-represent negative evaluations of presidential
performance, more so when they come from figures in the presidents party,
and especially when the presidents party also controls the Congress
2) the so-called "rally round the flag" effect is not very powerful, and there
is little evidence that president can consistently anticipate substantial
rallies when they use force abroad, especially during unified government,"
3) coverage of conflicts and wars tends to track elite rhetoric more closely
in the relatively early stages of a conflict, while tracking reality more closely
if a conflict persists," but "consumers become relatively less susceptible to
the influence of elite rhetoric regarding a conflict as they gather more
information [and] grow less responsive to new information, particularly
when it conflicts with their prior beliefs.

They also present evidence suggesting that the rise of new media (including
the blogosphere) is increasing audience fragmentation and self-selection
(i.e., citizens tend to consume news and opinions that are consistent with
their prior beliefs), and they speculate that this tendency may give elites a
greater capacity to manipulate public opinion regarding foreign policy over
time, especially among their fellow partisans, and to sustain such
manipulations for longer periods of time.
Among other things, this tendency poses a real challenge to anyone who
hopes to advance a genuinely bipartisan approach to foreign policy. If

were all consuming different sources of information, we will all be living in

a different subjective reality and well naturally tend to favor different
policies. The reasoned deliberation extolled by John Stuart Mill and other
democratic theorists, implicit in the idea of a democratic marketplace of
ideas becomes impossible, and what you get instead is a Tower of Babel
conducted at increasingly high volume. As Baum and Groeling note, it also
implies that if a president wants to win over support for a particular policy
such as escalation in Afghanistan trying to win over the opposition
media (e.g., in Obamas case, Fox News) is the smarter strategy. Getting a
favorable endorsement from The Nation wont help him much, but even
grudging support from Hannity or OReilly will be seen a as credible by GOP
sympathizers and independents and might sway more than a few of them.
Hmmm, I guess its time for me to go read The Corner. As for those of you
who want to know more about how leaders, the media, and the people
interact, go read Baum and Groeling.

Five big questions

BY STEPHEN M. WALT

JULY 12, 2010

Ive been thinking about U.S. grand strategy again, and pondering some big
questions that ought to be central to the debate on Americas global role.

Some of these big questions are researchable, others are by their very
nature more speculative. How you answer some of them also depends on
the theories you think are most powerful or applicable (i.e., realist theory
suggests one set of answers, liberal approaches offer a different set, etc.),
and the answers your get should have profound implications for what you
think U.S. grand strategy ought to be.
So here are Five Big Questions about contemporary world politics.
1. Where is the EU project headed? The construction of the European
Union was a major innovation in global politics, but new doubts have arisen
about its long-term future. Pessimists such as Notre Dames Sebastian
Rosato believe the highwater mark of European unity has already been
passed, while optimists like Princetons Andrew Moravcsik think that
Europes current difficulties are likely to encourage further steps towards
integration. The answer matters, because the re-emergence of genuine
power politics within Europe could force the United States to devote more
attention to a continent that some argue is "primed for peace" and no
longer of much strategic concern.
2. If Chinas power continues to rise, how easy will it be to get
Asian states to balance against it? Balance of power (or if you
prefer, balance of threat) theory predicts that weaker states will try to limit
the influence of rising powers by forming defensive alliances against them.
Chinas rise is already provoking alarm in many of its neighbors, who look
first to the United States and possibly to each other for assistance. But how
strong will this tendency to balance be? If China gets really powerful, and
the United States disengages entirely, some of Chinas neighbors might be
tempted to bandwagon with Beijing, thereby facilitating the emergence of a
Chinese "sphere of influence" in Asia. But if Chinas neighbors get support
from each other and from the United States, then theyll probably prefer to
balance.
But heres the question: Just how much support does the United States have
to provide, given that this issue ought to matter more to the Asian states
than it does to us? If you think balancing is the dominant tendency (as I do),
then the United States can pass a lot of the burden to Japan, India, Vietnam,
etc. It can "free-ride" to some degree on them, instead of the other way
around. But if you think these states will be reluctant to balance, then the
United States might have to do a lot of the heavy lifting itself.

To make matters more complicated still, both the United States and its Asian
allies may be tempted to do some bluffing with each other, to try to get
their allies to pay a larger share of the burden. Asian states will quietly

threaten to realign or go neutral if they dont get more backing from the
United States, and U.S. leaders may drop hints about disengagement if they
dont get what they want from the allies they are helping protect. And this
means figuring out just how large and iron-clad the U.S. commitment needs
to be in order to sustain a future balancing coalition is a tricky business, and
there will be lots of room for disagreement.
Finally, Chinas own conduct will also affect the propensity for Asian states
to balance. If China starts playing "divide-and-conquer" and refrains from
overtly threatening behavior, then its neighbors will be less worried and less
inclined to seek closer ties with either the United States or with each other.
If China starts throwing its weight around, by contrast, the United States will
find it easier to enlist allies and will be in a stronger position when
bargaining with them.
3. Whats the relationship between U.S. defense spending, the
deficit, and Americas economic health and well-being? Many people
believe that the United States is spending way too much on national
security, especially given the 2008 recession, the soaring budget deficit, the
impending retirement of the baby boomers, the looming fiscal problems
facing states and local governments, and the need to rebuild infrastructure
and improve U.S. education. I tend to agree with that view, but the actual
relationship between defense spending and economic well-being isnt that
clear-cut. In the short term, cutting defense spending dramatically would put
people out of work and could make the recession worse. Moreover, cutting
defense doesnt help with the budget deficit if the money just gets shifted
into entitlement programs.
As you might expect, economists who have studied this issue have reached
a wide array of conclusions (in part because the effects of defense spending
or defense cuts depend a lot on the condition an economy is in at the time).
Bottom line: If youre trying to figure out how big Americas global military
role ought to be, this is a Big Question that you cant ignore.
4. If the U.S. disengaged from key areas in the Muslim world
most notably Iraq and Afghanistan would the threat of antiAmerican terrorism rise or fall?
We are supposedly fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places to
"disrupt, defeat, and destroy al Qaeda." But our military presence in these
areas is one of the big reasons (along with our unconditional support for
Israel and our close ties with several Arab governments) why we have a
terrorism problem in the first place. Some scholars, such as Robert Pape of
the University of Chicago, argue that anti-American terrorism (and
especially suicide terrorism) would decline if the Untied States ended these
military campaigns and reduced its military "footprint" in these regions.
Others point out that our military efforts are also inspiring home-grown
terrorists like the inept Times Sq. bomber Feisal Shahzad. More hawkish
commentators believe that disengagement would be a morale booster for Al

Qaeda, facilitate their recruitment and make them more ambitious, and
encourage them to "follow us home."
As readers here probably know, I favor the former view. But my main point
here is that this issue is central to the design and conduct of U.S. grand
strategy, and deserves more careful and systematic scrutiny. It would be a
tragic irony if even well-intentioned efforts to make ourselves safer led to
policies that had precisely the opposite effect.
5. Is the era of U.S. primacy over? How will the end of post-Cold
War primacy affect its grand strategy and foreign policy? The United
States will remain the worlds most powerful state for some time to come.
Its economy will be the worlds largest until 2030 at least, and its per capita
income will be much higher than that of other potential rivals (meaning
there is great potential wealth that can be mobilized for national purposes).
Unlike Europe, Japan, and Russia, the U.S. population will continue to grow
and will not as old. And it will take a great deal of time before any other
country amasses global military capabilities akin to ours.
Nonetheless, the position of primacy that the United States enjoyed in the
immediate aftermath of the Soviet collapse has already eroded significantly
and is unlikely to return. China is growing rapidly, and it will gradually
translate some of its growing wealth into greater military capacity. It will not
challenge the United States around the globe, but it is likely to challenge
Americas current pre-eminence in East Asia. No great power likes seeing
another one with a large and visible military presence in its own backyard,
and China will be no exception to that rule. Other states may acquire a
greater capacity to deter us (in some case including WMD) thereby forcing
the United States to treat them gingerly than we might prefer. Countries
such as Brazil and Turkey have been growing steadily in recent years,
casting off their past deference to Washington, and gaining considerable
influence in their immediate surroundings.
To succeed, therefore, U.S. diplomacy and grand strategy will have to be
more nuanced, attentive, and flexible than it was in the earlier era of clear
U.S. dominance (and a rigidly bipolar global order). Well have to cut deals
where we used to dictate, and be more attentive to other states interests.
The bad news is that nuance and flexibility are not exactly Americas long
suit. We like black-and-white, good vs. evil crusades, and our leaders love to
tell the rest of the world what to do and how and when to do it.
Even worse, our political system encourages xenophobic posturing, knownothing demonizing, and relentless threat-inflation, all combined with a cando attitude that assumes Americans can solve almost any problem and have
to play the leading role in addressing almost anything that comes up. It is
also a system that seems incapable of acknowledging mistakes and
admitting that sometimes we really dont know best. Leaders like Bush and
Obama sometimes talk about the need for humility and restraint, but they
dont actually deliver it. So for me, a big question is whether the United

States can learn how to deal with a slightly more even distribution of power,
a somewhat larger set of consequential actors, and a rather messier global
order. Its hard to be confident, but Im open to being pleasantly surprised.
I can think of other questions too (e.g., how serious is the threat of nuclear
terrorism? How will climate change affect global politics? Will Iraq settle
down or fall apart after the U.S. withdraws? Etc.) but the five questions
listed above are the biggies for me right now. How about you?

Hawks, doves, and realists

BY STEPHEN M. WALT

JULY 28, 2010

As my vacation comes to an end, I want to thank Columbias Jack Snyder

and Georgetowns David Edelstein for their thoughtful guest posts. Last
week David had an excellent entry on the war-aversion of most
contemporary realists and I wanted to offer a brief reaction. Ive always
found it odd that many academics see realism as a hawkish view of world
politics and think that realists are big fans of using military power, even
though most contemporary realists with a few exceptions like Henry
Kissinger have generally been prudent about the use of force and
skeptical about most overseas military adventures. As Edelstein points out,
realists like Waltz, Morgenthau, and Kennan were opposed to U.S.
involvement in Vietnam on strategic rather than moral grounds and
younger realists (including me) opposed the Iraq War in 2003, were
ambivalent about our intervention in Balkans or Africa in the 1990s, and
think attacking Iran would be major strategic blunder today.
Edelsteins discussion of this issue is excellent and I dont have any major
disagreements with his post, but I would add a few additional points.
To start with a minor correction: the invasion of Afghanistan in 2002 is not
the only post-Cold War military operation that realists supported. As I recall,
most realists also supported Desert Storm, the 1991 liberation of Kuwait.
Moreover, it was two realists John Mearsheimer of the University of
Chicago and Barry Posen of MIT who offered the most optimistic (and as it
turned out, accurate) pre-war forecasts of how easy that war was likely to
be. (By contrast, both doves and a surprising number of hawks seemed to
think ousting Saddam from Kuwait was going to be very difficult).
As one might expect, realists supported Desert Storm for good balance-ofpower reasons. If Saddams Iraq had absorbed Kuwait permanently, its GDP

would have increased by about 40 percent and it could have translated that
additional wealth into additional military power. Although Saddams
military machine was never very impressive by U.S. standards, a somewhat
stronger Iraq might have posed a more serious long-term threat to the
regional balance in the Gulf and presented a more serious threat to Saudi
Arabia in particular. Given that the United States has always sought to
prevent any single power from dominating this oil-rich region, it made good
strategic sense to expel Iraq from Kuwait and to degrade its military power
in the process. Most of the rest of the world agreed, by the way, which is
why they helped us do it and why that operation did not tarnish our national
image.
It was also the right decision not to go to Baghdad back then, because
toppling Saddam in 1991 would have dragged us into precisely the same
quagmire we have been dealing with since we foolishly invaded in 2003.

The other reason why contemporary realists have been skeptical about
many recent military adventures is essentially structural. Since the end of
the Cold War, the United States has been in a remarkably favorable
geopolitical position. Realists care primarily (thought not exclusively) about
the balance of material power, and there just isnt a lot of additional power
out there to be won via military action. Instead, the main arenas of
American military activity have been conflict-ridden backwaters of little or
no strategic importance. They are hard to get to, difficult-to-impossible to
pacify, and dont have a lot of economic potential or military power of their
own. Getting bogged down in places like Iraq or Afghanistan just
strengthens jihadi narratives about Americas alleged antipathy to Islam,
and as with Vietnam, it ultimately wont matter very much whether we win
or lose. On simple cost-benefit grounds, therefore, realists dont think these
wars are worth the effort.
In short, because realists understand that military power is a crude
instrument and that governing alien societies is a costly business, they have
argued against such foolishness. Instead, the main advocates of military
involvement have been a coalition of neoconservatives and liberal
internationationalists, driven by a a variety of agendas and infused with a
remarkable degree of hubris. The results first in Iraq and now in
Afghanistan have not been pretty.
Realists have lost these debates, however, for somewhat similar structural
reasons. When a state is as big and powerful as the United States is, it is
hard for its leaders to believe that they cant do the impossible in places like
Iraq or Afghanistan. And when you are geographically distant from the
places you are meddling, its hard to believe that it will have any serious
consequences back here at home (9/11 notwithstanding). Also, as Ive noted

before, the Cold War got the United States in the habit of going everywhere
and doing everything, and led to the emergence of a large set of domestic
institutions whose cumulative impact is to to keep the United States
engaged in as many places as possible.
So long as there are no great power rivals out there, it is hard to argue that
attacking some country we have taken a disliking too (whether for valid or
bogus reasons) is going to be costly or difficult. Even worse, there will
always be various propagandists and clever briefers out there to explain
why thistime the intended target is really dangerous and this time the war
really will pay for itself, and this time failure to act will have catastrophic
consequences, and oh yes, this time other states really want us to do it,
etc., etc., etc. And no matter how many times the hawks have been wrong
in the past, plenty of people will take them seriously. For an 800-lb gorilla
like the USA, amnesia seems to be a congenital condition.
One last point. Contrary to what some critics think, realists dont want a
weaker America. But they do understand that a robust economy is the
foundation of all national power and that wasting money or lives on foolish
foreign adventures, excessive military spending, or a large, secretive,
redundant, and dysfunctional "intelligence" apparatus does not make the
country stronger or more secure. As the realist Kenneth Waltz put it back in
the early 1980s, "more is not better if less is enough." Those wise words
apply to the entire national security establishment, and to the costly
misadventures that civilians have been asking it to do in recent years. So in
addition to the reasons that Professor Edelstein emphasized, thats why
realists have been wary of using force in recent years

So you want to become an expert

BY DANIEL W. DREZNER

AUGUST 19, 2010

I received the following e-mail query today:

What I am wondering is; how did you become an expert in your field? I
understand that you obviously went to college and probably got all sorts of
degrees but how did you know when you were an expert in your field of
knowledge? So did you get all of your knowledge from your research while
in school, or do you just read a large amount of books on whatever interests
you?
This is one of those questions that sounds incredibly simplistic and yet is
impossible to answer in a pithy manner.
I mean, sure, I got a few degrees. And I suppose getting a Ph.D. allows you
to call yourself an expert over a very limited domain of knowledge. In truth,
however, Ive met many, many people with doctorates who are truly quite
dim about great many things (important safety tip: never buy a book from

someone who puts Ph.D. after their name in a book). Im dim about
aspectacular number of things. So even expertise is quite limited in its
domain.
That said, how does one become an expert without going to the Dagobah
system? Theres no one way and theres no one answer. Here are ten ways
to acquire expertise about world politics (WARNING: does not necessarily
apply to other fields of knowledge):
1) Go to school. There are people out there who are selftaught wunderkinds, capable of long, brilliant disquisitions about the
intricacies of international relations after reading Thucydides just once.
Theres a 99% chance that you are not one of these people. For you and
almost everyone else, the path to expertise is paved through college and
graduate school. So go forth and take courses on these subjects.
2) Read a lot. I mean, read a whole damn lot. Dont just read the
books and articles that are assigned to you in class. Read the stuff that you
notice popping up repeatedly in the footnotes and bibliographies of your
assigned reading. Read the classics. Read cutting edge work. Read
anything that seems of value. When you get to the point where you think
youre seeing recurring arguments, then youre approaching the cusp of
expertise.
3) Read a newspaper every day and a magazine every week. World
politics and current events are intertwined. The more you read about daily
events, the larger your mental database of interesting events that can be
used as raw data when considering various puzzles in world politics.
4) Hang around smart people. Anyone whos been to graduate school
knows that the best education comes from your peers. While the image of
the lonely, eccentric, brlliant grad student is a compelling narrative, its also
much more common in film than in real life. You can pick up an awful lot
from osmosis by hanging around smart people.
5) Never be afraid to ask a question that betrays your
ignorance. One of the smartest political scientists I ever met told me that
if I didnt understand a concept or presentation, odds were good that the
majority of other people in the room didnt understand either. People who
dont ask questions dont learn anything.
6) Walk the earth. You know, like Cain in Kung Fu. As recent events
suggest, there is an appalling lack of knowledge about how politics function
in other countries. If you can develop a good working knowledge of another
countrys language/culture/polity, then you can claim a relative amount of
expertise.
7) Get a job. There are oceans of knowledge that cannot be acquired via
books, coursework, or peers. Michael Polanyi labeled these kinds of

knowledge as tacit they have to be experienced to be learned. In world

politics, sometimes the best way to learn is to do.
8) Grow older. Aging doesnt have a lot of upside, but one of the benefits
is that youve probably done a lot more of items 1-7 than those young
whippersnappers people younger than you. Expertise has a relative quality
to it, and as you grow older, youre likely to have more of it than younger
generations.
9) Recognize your limits. True experts dont just know a lot they are
also aware of the vast oceans of knowledge that they dont know.
10) Quit reading blogs. They rot your brain and give you cooties.

What I learned from Jared Diamond

BY STEPHEN M. WALT

AUGUST 25, 2010

Earlier this summer I mentioned that I was reading Jared Diamonds

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or succeed, and I promised to sum up
the insights that I had gleaned from it. The book is well-worth reading if
not quite on a par with his earlier Guns, Germs, and Steel and youll learn
an enormous amount about a diverse set of past societies and the range of

scientific knowledge (geology, botany, forensic archaeology, etc.) that is

enabling us to understand why they prospered and/or declined.
The core of the book is a series of detailed case studies of societies that
collapsed and disappeared because they were unable to adapt to
demanding and/or deteriorating environmental, economic, or political
conditions. He examines the fate of the Easter Islanders, the Mayans, the
Anasazi of the Pacific Southwest, the Norse colonies in Western Greenland
(among others), and contrasts them with other societies (e.g., the New
Guinea highlanders) who managed to develop enduring modes of life in
demanding circumstances. He also considers modern phenomenon such as
the Rwandan genocide and China and Australias environmental problems in
light of these earlier examples.
I read the book because I am working on a project exploring why states (and
groups and individuals) often find it difficult to "cut their losses" and
abandon policies that are clearly not working. This topic is a subset of the
larger (and to me, endlessly fascinating) question of why smart and welleducated people can nonetheless make disastrous (and with hindsight,
obviously boneheaded) decisions. Diamonds work is also potentially
relevant to the perennial debate on American decline: Is it occurring, is it
inevitable, and how should we respond?
So what lessons does Diamond draw from his case studies, and what
insights might we glean for the conduct of foreign policy? Here are a few
thoughts that occurred to me as I finished the book.
First, he argues that sometimes societies fail to anticipate an emerging
problem because they lack adequate knowledge or prior experience with the
phenomenon at hand. Primitive societies may not have recognized the
danger of soil depletion, for example, because they lacked an adequate
understanding of basic soil chemistry. A society may also fail to spot trouble
if the main problem it is facing recurs only infrequently, because the
knowledge of how to detect or deal with the problem may have been
forgotten. As he emphasizes, this is especially problematic for primitive
societies that lack written records, but historical amnesia can also occur
even in highly literate societies like our own.
By analogy, one could argue that some recent failures in U.S. foreign policy
were of this sort. Hardly anybody anticipated that U.S. support for the antiSoviet mujaheddin in Afghanistan would eventually lead to the formation of
virulent anti-American terrorist groups, in part because the U.S. leaders
didnt know very much about that part of the world and because public
discourse about U.S. policy in the Middle East is filled with gaping holes.
Similarly, the people who led us into Iraq in 2003 were remarkably ignorant
about the history and basic character of Iraqi society (as well as the actual
nature of Saddams regime). To make matters worse, the U.S. military had

forgotten many of the lessons of Vietnam and had to try to relearn them all
over again, with only partial success.
Second, societies may fail to detect a growing problem if their leaders are
too far removed from the source of the trouble. Diamond refers to this as
the problem of "distant managers," and it may explain why U.S.
policymakers often make decisions that seem foolish in hindsight. As Ive
noted here before, one problem facing U.S. foreign policymakers is the sheer
number and scope of the problems they are trying to address, which
inevitably forces them to rely on reports from distant subordinates and to
address issues that they cannot be expected to understand very well.
Barack Obama doesnt get to spend the next few years learning Pashto and
immersing himself in the details of Afghan history and culture; instead, he
has to make decisions based on what he is being told by people on the
ground (who may or may not know more than he does). Unfortunately, the
latter have obvious reasons to tell an upbeat story, if only to make their own
efforts look good. If things are going badly, therefore, the people at the top
back in Washington may be the last to know.
Third, serious problems may go undetected when a long-term negative
trend is masked by large short-term fluctuations. Climate change is the
classic illustration here: there are lots of short-term fluctuations in
atmospheric temperature (daily, seasonally, annually and over eons), which
allows climate change skeptics to seize upon any unusual cold snap as
"evidence" that greenhouse gases are of no concern.
Similarly, its easy to find short-term signs of American primacy that may be
masking adverse long-term trends. Optimists can point to U.S. military
predominance and the fact that the American economy is still the worlds
largest, or to the number of patents and Nobel Prizes that U.S. scientists
continue to win. But just as the British Empire reached its greatest territorial
expanse after World War I (when its actual power was decidedly on the
wane), these positive features may be largely a product of past investments
(and good fortune) and focusing on them could lead us to miss the eroding
foundations of American power.
A fourth source of foolish decisions is the well-known tendency for
individuals to act in ways that are in their own selfish interest but not in the
interest of the society as a whole. The "tragedy of the commons" is a
classic illustration of this problem, but one sees the same basic dynamic
whenever a narrow interest groups preferences are allowed to trump the
broader national interest. Tariffs to protect particular industries or foreign
policies designed to appease a particular domestic constituency are obvious
cases in point.
Ironically, these problems may be especially acute in todays marketoriented democracies. We like to think that open societies foster a wellfunctioning "marketplace of ideas," and that the clash of different views will

weed out foolish notions and ensure that problems get identified and
addressed in a timely fashion.

Sometimes thats probably true, but when well-funded special interests can
readily pollute the national mind, intellectual market failure is the more
likely result. After all, it is often easier and cheaper to invent self-serving lies
and distortions than it is to ferret out the truth, and there are plenty of
people (and organizations) for whom truth-telling is anathema and selfserving political propaganda is the norm. When professional falsifiers are
more numerous, better-funded, and louder than truth-tellers, society will get
dumber over time and will end up repeating the same blunders.
Fifth, even when a state or society recognizes that it is in trouble, Diamond
identifies a number of pathologies that make it harder for them to adapt and
survive. Political divisions may make it impossible to take timely action even
when everyone realizes that something ought to be done (think gridlock in
Congress), and key leaders may be prone to either "groupthink" or various
forms of psychological denial. And the bad news here is that no one has
ever devised an effective and universally reliable antidote to these
problems.
Moreover, if a groups identity is based on certain cherished values or
beliefs, it may be hard to abandon them even when survival is at stake.
Diamond suggests that the Norse colonies in Greenland may have
disappeared because the Norse were unwilling to abandon certain
traditional practices and imitate the local Inuits (e.g., by adopting seal
hunting via kayaks), and it is easy to think of contemporary analogues to
this sort of cultural rigidity. Military organizations often find it hard to
abandon familiar doctrines and procedures, and states that are strongly
committed to particular territorial objectives often find it nearly impossible
to rethink these commitments. Look how long it took the French to leave
Algeria, or consider the attachment to Kosovo that is central to Serbian
nationalist thinking, and how it led them into a costly (and probably
unnecessary) war in 1999.
To sum up (in Diamonds words):
Human societies and smaller groups make disastrous decisions for a whole
sequence of reasons: failure to anticipate a problem, failure to perceive it
once it has arisen, failure to attempt to solve it after it has been perceived,
and failure to succeed in attempts to solve it."
That last point is worth highlighting too. Even when states do figure out that
theyre in trouble and get serious about trying to address the problem, they
may still fail because a ready and affordable fix is not available. Given their
remarkably fortunate history, Americans tend to think that any problem can
be fixed if we just try hard enough. That was never true in the past and it
isnt true today, and the real challenge remains learning how to distinguish

between those situations where extra effort is likely to pay off and those
where cutting ones losses makes a lot more sense.

Are you an optimist or a pessimist?

BY STEPHEN M. WALT

SEPTEMBER 20, 2010

I had dinner a couple of weeks ago with a group of Harvard colleagues (and
a visiting speaker), and we got into an interesting discussion about
Americas future as a world power. Nobody at the table questioned whether
the United States was going to remain a very powerful and influential state
for many years/decades to come. Instead, the main issues were whether it
would retain its current position of primacy, whether China might one day
supplant it as the dominant global power, and whether U.S. standards of
living would be significantly compromised in the future.
One participant (a distinguished economist), was especially bullish. He
argued that the United States enjoyed a considerable demographic
advantage over Europe, Russia, and Japan, largely due a higher birth rate
and greater openness to immigration. These societies will be shrinking and
getting much older on average, while the United States will continue to grow
for some time to come. He also argued that the United States remained far
more entrepreneurial than most other societies, and a better incubator of
technological innovation. Despite our current difficulties, therefore, he was
optimistic about the longer-term prospects for the U.S. economy and for
Americas position as a global power.
But then came the crucial caveat. After reciting this long list of American
advantages, my colleague remarked: "of course, our political system could
screw it all up." And everyone around the table nodded in agreement.
Thats my main fear, too. I think my colleagues catalogue of U.S. strengths
is basically correct, although the chronic under-performance of the U.S.
educational system and deteriorating infrastructure here at home do not
augur well for the future. And we ought to be seriously troubled by the fact
that the so-called "Land of the Free" has the highest incarceration rate in
the entire world. But my economist colleague was surely right in pointing to
certain key advantages.
The danger, as my colleagues generally agreed, is the incapacity of the U.S.
political system to make timely decisions, except in conditions of absolute

crisis, and its tendency over the past decade to make boneheaded decisions
that are hard to correct. The Founding Fathers were wary of concentrated
power (and with good reason), but the system they created is both filled
with veto points (i.e., places where a policy initiative can be stymied), and
unusually open to the influence of special interests (especially when they
have lots of money). The results are policies that are good for the wealthy
few but not for the society as a whole, and an impaired ability to make big
policy investments that will pay off long-term.

True, Obama was able to get a significant financial rescue package adopted,
but only because the Democrats controlled both the Senate and the
Houseand because Americans were genuinely terrified of a further economic
meltdown in 2009. A few months later, it took a massive effort to pass a
heavily watered-down health care bill. And ever since, the GOP (which
should be renamed the "Grand Obstructionist Party"), has been opposed to
virtually anything that Obama and the Democrats suggest. Congress
couldnt even pass an energy and climate change bill last year, even though
it was the hottest summer on record and there was a major oil spill in the
Gulf of Mexico.
Meanwhile, political discourse in the United States is increasingly dominated
by wingnuts whose main goal is to enrich themselves by spouting fact-free
accusations, largely as a form of "entertainment." It is hard to believe that
our political system can successfully address future challenges when so
many prominent politicians and pundits cheerfully spout the purest
nonsense, or shamelessly pander to the powerful but narrow interest groups
who fund their campaigns.
Given Americas innate strengths, our greatest enemy is neither some
emerging "peer competitor" nor a handful of angry terrorists. Rather, the
greatest danger lies in the foolish things we are likely to do to ourselves. I
dont think we are courting complete disaster, mind you, for the reasons
noted at the beginning of this post. Instead, we are just going to miss a lot
of opportunities, cause more trouble abroad than we should, squander
money and lives to no good purpose, live less well here at home than we
might, and generally fail to live up to many of our cherished ideals. Thats
hardly something to be proud of either.
So are you an optimist or a pessimist? Will Americas innate advantages
trump its politics? Will the core institutions of the country (including the
media), eventually sober up, realize that actions have consequences, and
start rewarding responsible behavior and reasoned discourse as opposed to
buffoonery and fear-mongering? Or will these same institutions continue to
indulge our worst instincts? What do you think?

Update: Via Yglesias, I see that Erica Payne has some similar thoughts over
at HuffPo. Well worth reading.

The top three reasons you should read Thucydides

BY DANIEL W. DREZNER

SEPTEMBER 21, 2010

Your humble blogger is teaching Thucydides History of the

Peloponnesian War this week. Now, back in the day, there would be no
need to justify the inclusion of such a classic into a course. Nowadays, with
the kids and their YouFace, I suppose some justification should be provided.
Here are three reasons to read this Greek classic:
1) It will purge 300 from your system. The ancients were all about the
purging, and this classic will help you void the non-so-classic film. True, the
two stories dont overlap all that much. And true, I like homoerotic goofiness
as much as the next hetrosexual. That said, its a crying shame that far
more people have seen that mockery of Greek history than read any
Greek history. Alas, even modern criticisms of 300 wind up infected
with stupid and ignorant Thucydides references. So read some Thucydides
and you can enjoy Gerald Butlers abs Lena Headeys abs 300 on a more
refined, absurdist plane.
3) You will recognize some recurrent patterns in history. Thucydides
will help one develop a better appreciation for life in 5th century BC, but it
willreally help one develop an appreciation for the aspects of human nature
that are unchanged through time.
For exhibit A, consider this recent Kindred Winecoff post with respect to
American soldiers, war crimes, and nativism. The relevant section:

The Washington Post recently reported that a handful of soldiers engaged in

murder campaigns that targeted Afghan civilians for sport. I assume this,
like the Abu Ghraib disaster, is an isolated incident, but thats not really the
point. After reading the piece a friend remarked:
[T]his isnt about U.S. troops, or even about this particular group of U.S.
troops. Its too easy to blame this on the type of people likely to be soldiers,
or say that this is a group of bad apples. In the right situation, this could be
me. This could be you.
War may bring out courage and heroism in the human heart, and many of
us like celebrating that. And theres nothing wrong with celebrating valor.
But war also brings out brutality and nihilism. And that is why we cannot go
to war lightly, why if war is to be an option, it must be the last option, a
desperate refuge that we flee to with a heavy heart.
We generally dont think like that, especially in the run-up to wars. It
doesnt enter our
cost-benefit calculus.

I strongly suspect it enters into the cost-benefit calculation of any officer

required to read Thucydides. All it takes is one read of his discussion of state
failure in Cocyra to recognize that war has always had this kind of effect on
individuals and societies. See if any of this sounds familiar:
The sufferings which revolution entailed upon the cities were many and terrible,
such as have occurred and always will occur, as long as the nature of mankind
remains the same; though in a severer or milder form, and varying in their
symptoms, according to the variety of the particular cases. In peace and prosperity,
states and individuals have better sentiments, because they do not find themselves
suddenly confronted with imperious necessities; but war takes away the easy
supply of daily wants, and so proves a rough master, that brings most mens
characters to a level with their fortunes.
Revolution thus ran its course from city to city, and the places which it arrived at
last, from having heard what had been done before, carried to a still greater excess
the refinement of their inventions, as manifested in the cunning of their enterprises
and the atrocity of their reprisals. Words had to change their ordinary meaning and
to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered
the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was
held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to
act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a
justifiable means of self-defence. The advocate of extreme measures was always
trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected.

To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but
to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be
afraid of your adversaries. In fine, to forestall an intending criminal, or to suggest
the idea of a crime where it was wanting, was equally commended until even blood
became a weaker tie than party, from the superior readiness of those united by the
latter to dare everything without reserve; for such associations had not in view the
blessings derivable from established institutions but were formed by ambition for
their overthrow; and the confidence of their members in each other rested less on
any religious sanction than upon complicity in crime.
The fair proposals of an adversary were met with jealous precautions by the
stronger of the two, and not with a generous confidence. Revenge also was held of
more account than self-preservation. Oaths of reconciliation, being only proffered
on either side to meet an immediate difficulty, only held good so long as no other
weapon was at hand; but when opportunity offered, he who first ventured to seize it
and to take his enemy off his guard, thought this perfidious vengeance sweeter
than an open one, since, considerations of safety apart, success by treachery won
him the palm of superior intelligence. Indeed it is generally the case that men are
readier to call rogues clever than simpletons honest, and are as ashamed of being
the second as they are proud of being the first. The cause of all these evils was the
lust for power arising from greed and ambition; and from these passions proceeded
the violence of parties once engaged in contention.

Seriously, go read the whole thing. [But, like, that was a really long
paragraph of unindented text, man!!ed. Then buy the book it looks much
better on the printed page.]

An Arsenal We Can All Live With

GARY SCHAUB Jr. and JAMES FORSYTH Jr
MAY 23, 2010
THE Pentagon has now told the public, for the first time, precisely how many
nuclear weapons the United States has in its arsenal: 5,113. That is exactly
4,802 more than we need.
Last week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton testified before the Senate to advocate approval of the so-called
New Start treaty, signed by President Obama and President Dmitri
Medvedev of Russia last month. The treatys ceiling of 1,550 warheads
deployed on 700 missiles and bombers will leave us with fewer warheads
than at any time since John F. Kennedy was president. Yet the United States
could further reduce its reliance on nuclear weapons without sacrificing

security. Indeed, we have calculated that the country could address its
conceivable national defense and military concerns with only 311 strategic
nuclear weapons. (While we are civilian Air Force employees, we speak only
for ourselves and not the Pentagon.)
This may seem a trifling number compared with the arsenals built up in the
cold war, but 311 warheads would provide the equivalent of 1,900 megatons
of explosive power, or nine-and-a-half times the amount that Secretary of
Defense Robert McNamara argued in 1965 could incapacitate the Soviet
Union by destroying one-quarter to one-third of its population and about
two-thirds of its industrial capacity.
Considering that we face no threat today similar to that of the Soviet Union
45 years ago, this should be more than adequate firepower for any
defensive measure or, if need be, an offensive strike. And this would be true
even if, against all expectations, our capacity was halved by an enemys
surprise first strike. In addition, should we want to hit an enemy without
destroying its society, the 311 weapons would be adequate for taking out a
wide range of hardened targets like missile silos or command-and-control
bunkers.
The key to shrinking our nuclear arsenal so radically would be dispersing the
311 weapons on land, at sea and on airplanes to get the maximum flexibility
and survivability.
Ideally, 100 would be placed on single-warhead intercontinental ballistic
missiles, like the Minuteman III systems now in service. These missiles,
which have pinpoint accuracy, are scattered around the country in such a
way that only one potential enemy, Russia, would have any chance of
rendering the arsenal impotent with a surprise strike. (And it is likely that
our unilateral cuts would entice Moscow, which has been retiring its systems
at a fast clip in recent years, to follow suit.) Equally important, these missile
sites are easily detected and monitored, which would reassure our friends
and provide a credible threat to our enemies.

The sea leg of the plan would involve placing 24 Trident D-5 missiles, each
with a single nuclear warhead, on each of our Ohio-class submarines.
Todays fleet of 14 can be cut to 12, with eight on patrol at a given time,
together carrying 192 missiles ready to launch. The Tridents are extremely
effective, as they can be moved around the globe on the submarines,
cannot be easily detected, and present a risk to even hardened targets. And
should any of our allies feel that our cuts in seaborne missiles are
worrisome, we can remind them that the British and French will keep their
complementary nuclear capabilities in the Atlantic.

Finally, for maximum flexibility in our nuclear arsenal, each of our B-2
stealth bombers could carry one air-launched nuclear cruise missile. While
we have 20 such bombers, we assume that one would be undergoing repairs
at any given time, giving us the final 19 warheads in our 311-missile plan.
Our B-2 fleet is more than adequate for nuclear escalation control and
political signaling, and giving it an exclusive role in our nuclear strategy
would allow us to convert all our B-52H bombers to a conventional role,
which is far more likely to be of use in our post-cold-war world.
While 311 is a radical cut from current levels, it is not the same as zero, nor
is it a steppingstone to abandoning our nuclear deterrent. The idea of a
nuclear-weapon-free world is not an option for the foreseeable future.
Nuclear weapons make leaders vigilant and risk-averse. That their use is to
be avoided does not render them useless. Quite the opposite: nuclear
weapons might be the most politically useful weapons a state can possess.
They deter adversaries from threatening with weapons of mass destruction
the American homeland, United States forces abroad and our allies and
friends. They also remove the incentive for our allies to acquire nuclear
weapons for their own protection.
We need a nuclear arsenal. But we certainly dont need one that is as big,
expensive and unnecessarily threatening to much of the world as the one
we have now.

Republic or empire?

BY STEPHEN M. WALT

NOVEMBER 29, 2010

My colleague and friend (and brother-in-law) Christopher Stone sent me an

email over the weekend, and I thought I should share it with you. His
message read as follows:
I was reading EM Forsters Two Cheers for Democracy on the plane out to LA
yesterday, and I came across an extraordinary little essay that seems to me
to point to important elements of our politics today.
The essay is called "Post-Munich," and it is a reflection, written in 1939, on
the curious political psychology that gripped England after Chamberlain
made his deal with Hitler. He describes the country as in a strange doublestate: still deeply fearful, and yet simultaneously distractible by the routines
of life promised through the deal. Here is what Forster writes:
This state of being half-frightened and half-thinking about something else
at the same time is the state of many English people today. It is worth
examining, partly because it is interesting, partly because, like all mixed
states, it can be improved by thought.
Forster goes on to describe why it is so hard to break free and face what
needs to be done:
We are urged. . . to face facts, and we ought to. But we can only face them
by being double-faced. The facts lie in opposite directions, and no
exhortation will group them into a single field. No slogan works. All is lost if
the totalitarians destroy us. But all is equally lost if we have nothing left to
lose.
And finally:
Sensitive people are having a particularly humiliating time just now.
Looking at the international scene, they see, with a clearness denied to
politicians, that if Fascism wins we are done for, and that we must become
Fascist to win. There seems no escape from this hideous dilemma and those
who face it most honestly often go jumpy.

Back to Chris:
If you just substitute terrorists for totalitarians and terrorism for fascism,
you have a pretty good picture of our politics today. But heres the
important question this raises in my mind:
Why, I ask myself, does the United States today seem like England after
Munich? The Taliban are not Hitler. I think it is because we have indulged
this same appeasement, but with ourselves. We are on both sides of the
bargain: we are the worlds threatening tyrant,and we are the worlds best
hope for freedom. And rather than fight out that battle, we have decided we
can have it both ways. We have walked up to the fundamental choice that
we face about our role in the world, and we have made a Munich pact with
ourselves instead of choosing liberty and democracy for all. The point here
is that it is as unstable and unholy a pact as Munich. It will come undone,
and it should come undone. But then the real choice and the real peril will
confront us."
My reaction: I reproduced his email because I think Chris is on to
something (just as Forster was back in 1939). Americans think we ought to
be managing the whole world, but we shouldnt have to pay taxes or
sacrifice our way of life in order to do it. We use our military machine to kill
literally tens of thousands of Muslims in different countries, and then we are
surprised when a handful of them get mad and try (usually not every
effectively) to hit us back. But then we docilely submit to all sorts of
degrading and costly procedures at airports, because we demand to be
protected from threats whose origins weve been refusing to talk about
honestly for years.
We are constantly warned about grave dangers, secret plots, impending
confrontations, slow-motion crises, etc., and we are told that these often
hypothetical scenarios justify compromising liberties here at home and
engaging in practices (torture, targeted assassinations, preventive missile
strikes at suspected terrorists, etc.) that we would roundly condemn if
anyone else did them. We think it is an outrage when North Korea shells a
South Korean island and kills four people, (correct), yet it is just "business as
usual" when one of our drones hits some innocent civilians in Pakistan or
Yemen. We have disdain for our politics and our politicians, but instead of
questioning the institutions and practices that fuel this dysfunction, we
indulge in fairy tales about so-called leaders who will somehow lead us out
of the darkness.
If I am reading Chris right, the lesson here is that the United States cannot
be a republic and an empire, because the latter inevitably ends up
corrupting the former. This is the central point raised by the late Chalmers
Johnson (who passed away last week), by Andrew Bacevich, and by a
number of other thoughtful people. It is an issue that gets raised in various
corners of the blogosphere, but hardly ever in the mainstream press and
certainly not at most of the think tanks and talk shops inside the Beltway,

most of whom are devoted custodians of energetic international activism.

And until that debate starts happening in a serious way, we will continue to
stumble about, simultaneously bearing the weight of the world and being
afraid of our own shadow.

More to read from Mearsheimer

BY STEPHEN M. WALT

DECEMBER 20, 2010

While Ive been busy blogging for the past two years, my co-author and
friend John Mearsheimer has been busy writing books and articles. Id be
doing both you and him a disservice if I didnt take a moment to shine a
spotlight on two of his recent works.
The first is a big article in the latest issue of The National Interest, entitled
"Imperial by Design." The article offers a compelling explanation for
Americas recent foreign policy failures, which he traces to the excesses and
errors of the Clinton-era "liberal imperialists" and Bush-era
neoconservatives. (Not surprisingly, Obama seems to be following the
formers blueprint in most respects). Both groups sought to use American
power to shape the world in our image, although Clinton did so rather
gingerly while Bush & Co. did so with reckless abandon. This ambitious and
largely bipartisan attempt to manage the entire globe ultimately led to two
losing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a costly squandering of American
power. Mearsheimer proposes a return to the earlier U.S. strategy of
"offshore balancing," a strategy that would protect Americas core interests
at far less cost and generate less anti-American extremism. Ideally, this
article ought to begin a long-overdue debate on the fundamentals of
American grand strategy, but Im not at all sure that it will. At this point
there are too many people inside-the-Beltway with a vested interest in a
global military footprint, and little interest in examining its do footprint, and
little interest in examining the downside to this posture.
The second item is a short book: Why Leaders Lie: The Truth about Lying in
International Politics. Here John identifies the different types of lies that
governments tell, and draws careful distinctions between different types of
deception (lying, "spinning" and concealment). For me, his most striking
finding is that although governments do lie to each other on occasion,
genuine inter-state lying is relatively rare. The reason is simple: states dont
trust each other anyway, so they dont accept each others statements at
face value and do their best to verify what other states tell them. This
means that most lies will get detected (and all states know this), so there
isnt much point in trying to tell a bald-faced lie to another government. By
contrast, both democratic and authoritarian governments lie to their own
people with remarkable frequency. (I might add that so far,

the Wikileaks revelations seem to bear this out). John acknowledges that it
is sometimes necessary for leaders to lie, but he cautions that excessive
lying is deeply corrosive to the political order and tends to lead to
widespread corruption and social harm.
The book is only 102 pages of text, and it would make a great little stocking
stuffer for the strategist (or ethicist) on your list.

Grading U.S. grand strategy

BY STEPHEN M. WALT

DECEMBER 28, 2010

Like most residents of New England, Ive spent the past day digging out
from a major snowstorm. Unlike most of my neighbors, Ive also spent many
hours grading the take-home final from my course. It occurred to me that
some of you might like to know what we asked our students, and what some
of them had to say about it.
The exam was in two parts, and the first part consisted of the following
hypothetical question:
Q1: "Due to an unexpected movement of tectonic plates, the United States
and China have switched geographic locations. The United States is now
located in East Asia; sharing borders with Russia, North Korea, India,
Mongolia, Vietnam, etc., and is much closer to Japan, while China is now
located in North America, in-between Canada and Mexico. Assume that all
other features of the two societies are unchanged (i.e., each state faces this
new situation with the same populations they have today, along with the
same natural resource endowments, military capabilities, economic
systems, political institutions, etc.).
The question: how would this development affect contemporary
international relations? Your answer should draw upon the theoretical
material covered in this course (e.g., realism, liberalism, constructivism,
etc.) but feel free to add your own ideas as well."
Students were given 1250 words (5-6 pages) to address this question, and
most of them did pretty well with it. The question is obviously designed to
get them to think through what different theories tell you about how
geography would affect relations between states. For instance: would US
relations with India and Japan deteriorate if the US were located nearby, or

would shared democratic values dampen potential rivalries? Would China try
to establish regional hegemony in the Western hemisphere, and would
states like Canada, Mexico or Brazil try to contain it? Or would they
"bandwagon" with China as they have done with the United States? Would
the United States have to curtail its global ambitions in order to deal with
security problems closer to home such as Pakistan, North Korea, Burma,
or Russia or would it feel compelled to use force against a threatening
neighbor like North Korea? Theres no single "right answer" to this sort of
question; what Im looking for is a clear, logically consistent, and wellargued set of predictions.
Not surprisingly, many of the papers argued that switching places would be
a tremendous benefit to China. In particular, students clearly recognized
that the United States enjoys some enormous geographic advantages. In
addition to being wealthier and more powerful than any of the other major
powers, the United States is protected by two enormous oceanic
moats and has no great powers in its immediate neighborhood. Moving from
East Asia to the Western hemisphere would put China in this same favorable
position, and place the United States in a much more problematic location in
East Asia.
But what was really interesting was an implication that some (though hardly
all) students drew from this line of argument. A number of them argued that
China would be so secure in the Western hemisphere that it could focus
even more attention on economic development, and not worry very much
about military or security developments elsewhere. It would want to defend
its own territory, and it would worry about securing energy supplies from
Canada, Venezuela, Mexico, and elsewhere, but otherwise it would be sitting
pretty and could remain aloof from lots of other security issues. The United
States, by contrast, would be facing all sorts of challenges over in Asia and
would have to try to deal with all of them.
An obvious question, therefore, is: why doesnt this same logic apply to the
United States today? Instead of devoting trillions of dollars to transforming
the Middle East, trying to bring Afghanistan into the 20th century (or is it the
19th?) and generally interfering all over the world, the United States could
almost certainly do a lot less on the world stage and devote some of those
resources to balancing budgets and fixing things here at home. Its
callednation-building, but wed be building our nation and our future, not
somebody elses.
What some of our students have intuitively grasped (and not because we
told them), is that there is in fact a very powerful case for a much more
limited U.S. military posture overseas. Indeed, given the existence of
nuclear weapons, there is even a cogent case to be made for something
approaching isolationism, as laid out by people like the late Eric Nordlinger,
by the CATO Institutes Chris Preble, or the team of Gholz, Press, and
Sapolsky. I dont go quite that far myself (i.e., Im an offshore balancer, not
an isolationist), but I recognize that there is a serious case for the latter

position. And because this view does have a certain appeal, the current
foreign-policy establishment has to do a lot of threat-mongering and engage
in a lot of ideological oversell in order to get Americans to keep paying for
foreign wars and sending their sons and daughters out to garrison the globe.
It also helps to portray anybody who advocates doing less as some sort of
idealistic pacifist or naive appeaser.
But this debate is beginning to open up. When states and local governments
are facing bankruptcy, when military adventures like Iraq or Afghanistan
yield not victory but at best only prolonged and costly draws, and when
there is in fact no ideologically motivated great power adversary out there
trying to "bury us," then continuing to try to manage the whole goddamn
planet isnt just foolish, its unconscionable. It will probably take another
decade for this reality to work its way through our hidebound nationalsecurity establishment, but the winds of change are already apparent. And
not a moment too soon.

Will Asia balance? (revisited)

BY STEPHEN M. WALT

OCTOBER 1, 2010

Assuming China continues to grow economically (which seems like a fairly

safe bet), how will this trend affect strategic alignments in Asia? Ive posted
on this topic before (see here), but Ive been thinking about it again in light
of some recent developments and after reading some recent scholarship on
the topic.
Structural realism gives a straightforward answer to the question: As China
becomes more powerful, other Asian states will move to balance it by
devoting more of their own wealth to national security and by forging closer
security ties with each other and with powerful external actors like the
United States.
This is essentially a pure "balance-of power" explanation, but as some of
you probably know, I think that is not the best way to explain why alliances
form. In the near-to-medium term, the extent to which Asian states balance
against China will depend not just on Chinese power, but on the level of

threat that these states perceive. The level of threat, in turn will be affected
not just by Chinas aggregate capabilities (i.e., its GDP, defense spending,
etc.) but also by:
1) Geography,
2) Offensive military capabilities, and
3) Its perceived intentions.
To be more specific, states that are closer to China are likely to be more
worried than states that lie some distance away. In particular, states that
border directly on China such as Vietnam have to fear Chinas rising
power more than states who are separated by water (such as Indonesia)
because it is inherently more difficult to project power over oceans. (Taiwan
is something of a special case, given the tangled history of cross-strait
relations and its relative proximity).
Furthermore, the level of threat that China poses will depend in part of how
it chooses to mobilize its growing economic might. If it builds military
capabilities that are primarily designed to defend its own territory, Chinas
neighbors will feel less threatened and be less inclined to balance against it.
By contrast, if China develops the power projection capabilities that are
typical of most great powers (i.e., large naval and air forces, long-range
missiles, amphibious capabilities, etc.), then others in the region will worry
about what those capabilities might be used for and they will be more likely
to join forces with each other (and the United States) to protect their own
interests and autonomy.

Of course, as China becomes more deeply enmeshed in the world economy

and more dependent on overseas resources and markets, its interest in
having military capabilities that can operate in far-flung areas is likely to
grow. If I had to bet, therefore, Id assume that Chinas power-projection
forces will continue to expand and that this trend will reinforce balancing
tendencies.
Finally, the level of threat will also be affected by whether China is perceived
as an ambitious, revisionist power, or whether it is seen as a state that
seeks to preserve the regional status quo. In this regard, Chinas shift to a
more assertive regional diplomacy such as its recent assertion that the
South China Sea is a "core interest" and its obvious desire to reduce the U.S.
role there stands in obvious contrast to its previous emphasis on a
"peaceful rise." One might add the hard-nosed diplomacy China displayed in
the recent dispute with Japan over a captured Chinese trawler. The more
sharp elbows that Beijing throws, the more that its neighbors will worry and
the more they will look for mutual support.

In short, the intensity of balancing behavior by Chinas neighbors will be

affected by more than just Chinas material capabilities; how it chooses to
use its growing capabilities will have a significant impact as well.
Yet balancing behavior is not automatic, even when the level of threat is
rising. Here are several other factors to keep in mind when trying to forecast
future Asian alignments.
First, any balancing coalition in Asia is going to face serious dilemmas of
collective action. Although many Asian states may worry about a rising
threat from China, each will also be tempted to get others to bear most of
the burden and to free-ride on their efforts. This may also include trying to
simultaneously balance (in part) while still cultivating close economic
relations with China. This problem may be compounded by lingering
historical divisions between potential alliance partners (e.g., Japan and
South Korea), and by adroit Chinese efforts to play "divide-and-rule."
Second, the role of the United States will be critical, but success will require
careful judgment and skillful diplomatic management. On the one hand,
Asian states are more likely to balance China if they believe the United
States will back them up. But on the other hand, if they are too sure of U.S.
assistance, they will be tempted to free-ride on Uncle Sam and thus
contribute too little to collective defense. U.S. policymakers will have to walk
a fine line: providing enough reassurance to convince Asian partners that
balancing will work, but leaving enough doubts so that Washington doesnt
have to do all the heavy lifting ourselves.
In addition, because U.S. allies will try to get us to do more by constantly
questioning the credibility of U.S. commitments, managing these Asian
alliances is going to require a deft combination of hard bargaining and
supportive diplomacy. Washington does hold one obvious ace, however: In
the end, Chinas rising power is more of a problem for its neighbors than it is
for us, and we ought to be able to drive a good bargain when it is time to
allocate costs and benefits of any balancing coalition.

Third, if one takes an even longer-term perspective, and one assumes that
Chinas rise is not interrupted, then regional balancing of the sort depicted
above may one day become impossible. Balancing the USSR was facilitated
by the fact that its economy was significantly smaller and less efficient than
Americas; which meant that we were waging the Cold War against an
adversary with significant smaller latent capabilities. But if China eventually
emerges as the worlds largest economy, and if rising per capita income
creates greater surpluses for its government to devote to foreign policy
purposes, then the advantages the United States enjoyed in World War I,
World War II, and the Cold War would be significantly reduced and might
even disappear. Over time, some Asian states may choose to bandwagon

instead, leading to the emergence of a Chinese sphere of influence in Asia

akin to the U.S. sphere in the Western hemisphere.
This outcome is far from certain, however, and I frankly dont expect it to
occur before the end of my own career. (Side note: I plan on working for a
long time). If the United States keeps squandering its power in unnecessary
wars and fails to keep its house in order here at home, then that day might
arrive more quickly. I dont think such self-inflicted wounds will keep
happening, but I wish I could rule them out completely.